Stop using Brave Browser
Stop using Brave Browser
284 comments
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I don't trust homophobes or cryptobros, especially not those with a history of selling users out like Brendan Eich
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Especially when there is Firefox and Firefox-based, privacy-focused alternative with great add-blocking and privacy extensions.
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I don’t trust anyone who invented Javascript.
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Very strongly worded, but yes.
Brave have had a history of controversy since their inception. Every time something happens, the CEO went on a marketing campaign across social media and drummed up enough new users to drown it out. However the attitude of the business is clear: it would take a very small sack of money for Brave to sell out its users.
If you're going to use a Chromium web browser, there are non-commercial open source projects that don't have a history of shady shit. However Firefox forks are better.
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Which forks do you suggest?
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Not the OP, but here are some alternatives anyway.
Firefox:
Chrome:
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Mullvad , LibreWolf and Tor.
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Absoutely. I mostly use Firefox because I'm so familiar with it by now but the privacy is generally much better and it doesn't have a massive monopoly on the web. I'm just a lot more comfortable with it.
When I have to, I use ungoogled-chromium on desktop and Bromite on mobile. I recommend those to anyone familiar with Chrome.
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Unfortunately Bromite has been abandoned, however someone has made a fork called Cromite.
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People that use Brave always remind of the people pushing crypto.
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Seems like the Venn diagram of those two groups approaches a circle, if the OP is any indication.
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I use firefox as my main but have brave as my chromium/PWA browser because I don't really fancy using edge or chrome
What other browsers out there support PWAs that are less spyware-ey than the big names
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Chromium is pretty safe to use. There are also builds of "de-googled Chromium" available.
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Vivaldi, though it's source available rather than fully open source. It's mostly the frontend JavaScript (I think?) code which is proprietary.
Apparently, if you know enough to understand it, you can technically work out what all the proprietary code is and does because it's all fairly simple stuff and separate from the Chromium base (which they make available on their site), although distributing it would be against their ToS (I guess it's technically reverse engineering, which is also against their ToS).
It's been a very long time and I can't actually confirm that for the current release, but it was at least true a few years ago when someone who knew far more about programming than me mentioned it on their forums. I think some people took a look at it and found some basic theming stuff, but nothing nefarious.
They have a fairly solid privacy policy last I checked. They also have no intention of sticking with Google's v3 plans.
The only thing I don't like is they run a daily user count check by pinging their servers. They've made it so that there are no IDs, anonymized or otherwise, but it's still a bit of a black mark on an otherwise decent piece of software.
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Why was appointing Eich as CEO so controversial? It's because he donated $1,000 in support of California's Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California's state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Which is all the reason I need.
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If he had changed his tune since then and done something to offset that, I might be willing to cut him some slack.
But, instead, he seems to have doubled down...
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They had me at invented JavaScript
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Not a single solid reason given in this unhinged rent except a mention of that affiliate link fiasco, which even they themselves agree was a major fuckup.
All BAT and crypto stuff are completely opt-in and it barely takes a few clicks to set the browser to never let you see that side of it again. As for Brendan's political affiliations, most users couldn't care less. He might as well be a
furryflat-earther but if the product is good, it is good. Stop acting like you're sure all the things you use throughout the day aren't made by people with doubtful leanings.I personally don't use Brave on desktop, Firefox is good enough; but it is the best option on Android currently since Bromite is almost always a Chromium version behind whatever is current.
Edit: Just learnt that I was wrong in my perception of what "furry" meant. Reading the replies objecting to that reference made me dig a bit deeper and realise that it's just a type of fandom, and not some sex-deviant cult that pop media made me believe. Sorry for the wrong example.
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mf really conflated being a homophobe to being a furry 💀
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Can we please let this meme hate die? How have you people not adjusted to the concept of putting on a costume and roleplaying, we do it every October.
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what a goofball...
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Corrected now
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As for Brendan’s political affiliations, most users couldn’t care less. He might as well be a furry but if the product is good, it is good. Stop acting like you’re sure all the things you use throughout the day aren’t made by people with doubtful leanings.
- People do care about Eich's beliefs, or this discussion wouldn't even be happening.
- There's nothing wrong with being a furry, and trying to compare it as though it's equivalent or worse than being a shitbag bigot is bullshit.
- If you know that the people who run a company are bigots and you continue to use their products and services, you are giving your explicit approval to who they are and what they do. "if the product is good, it is good" absolutely fucking not. Goods and services don't exist in a vacuum.
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Not a single solid reason given in this unhinged rent except a mention of that affiliate link fiasco, which even they themselves agree was a major fuckup.
That's pretty dismissive of a feature that could only have been added intentionally. It's not like there was some accidental glitch that was adding affiliate suffixes on the end of links.
What we have here is a business poking and prodding and seeing what they can get away with. You've said that there's only one thing they did that's truly out of line, while glossing over the fact that most of what they do is borderline. Their intent is clear.
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Imagine comparing furries to homophobes lol. Sit down you goofball.
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Corrected, sorry for that
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If directly funding homophobic policies isn't a good enough reason for you, you need to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself why that is
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The very first reason seems valid to me. No way anyone should be supporting a hateful asshole like that. Anybody going around saying homosexuality is any less valid than heterosexuality has no place in our society anymore.
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Brave is the browser for the far right.
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Not a single solid reason given
Well not to you, but that doesn't mean much considering you think spyware is fine as long as it's opt-in (and that being a furry is equivalent in severity to being homophobic, wtf). The fact that you think this article is bad is basically a ringing endorsement.
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"Funding awful people doesn't make me awful" Say sike right now
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it is the best option on Android currently since Bromite is almost always a Chromium version behind whatever is current.
Right now Bromite is unmaintained and has been for a long time. I shudder to think how many versions it's behind.
If you want a FOSS Chromium-based Android browser, use Mulch. It gets updates fairly quickly and serves much of the same purpose that Bromite did, while actually having a (very slightly) larger dev team.
Edit: Oops. Didn't realize that Mulch doesn't have a content blocker. Someone else mentioned Cromite (which does have a built-in content blocker), so that might be a good option as well.
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Or Cromite, a fork of Bromite that's kept up to date and has more features.
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To anyone reading this article, only the first quarter of it is about the beliefs and political stance of the developers. The rest of the article after that goes into more technical reasons.
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All I needed to read was in the first paragraph.
Brave Software, the company behind the browser of the same name, was founded by Brendan Eich. He's best known as the creator of JavaScript from his days at Netscape Communications
I mean, JS is his baby that's all there needs to be said about the person's motivations.
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"JS is his baby that’s all there needs to be said about the person’s motivations."
"During these formative years of the Web, web pages could only be static, lacking the capability for dynamic behavior after the page was loaded in the browser. There was a desire in the flourishing web development scene to remove this limitation, so in 1995, Netscape decided to add a scripting language to Navigator. They pursued two routes to achieve this: collaborating with Sun Microsystems to embed the Java programming language, while also hiring Brendan Eich to embed the Scheme language."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript
I think you're confusing the reasons behind the initial intent of JS versus what it has evolved into almost 30 years later.
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I love Brave, use it daily, and this article didn't convince me at all. Vaguely motioning at the founder's ancient political donations or the optional crypto features, doesn't make a strong case.
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2008 is not ancient. Nor is same-sex marriage some minor technical legal point.
Nor has he repented.
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Nor has he repented.
That's the important point for me.
People can change after 20 years. But he prefers to double-down instead.
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So? He’s the CEO of a company that already gets no money from me.
Online forums pick the weirdest hills to die on sometimes. You’ve probably used hundreds of products today alone made by companies whose CEOs are worse dickwads than Eich. But this gave you a chance to feel superior online so you had to take it lmao
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You see, when someone is known to make bad choices it makes sense to approach what they do with apprehension. This guy not only has a history of bad choices, he's also the CEO.
You're free to do as you like of course, but I'd say it's hardly fair to say the article is unconvincing.
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Depends. As long as he doesn't rub it in my face by putting it into the browser, I don't care much. So I understand people who are pissed off because crypto is being rubbed in your face with Brave. But since I can disable that (and disabling it syncs to my other devices), I am also fine with that.
In return I get a browser where I like the sync model, with integrated Tor private browsing mode, and which is based on Chromium (which has sadly still the best dev tools, IMO).
Even MS Edge has some nice features and I used it for a while (I very much like that you can specify in which browser profile you want to open external links in). But they started to put more and more of their Microsoft bullshit into it with each version trying to sell me on all the different fucked up services they offer. Saying "no" once or twice: no problem. Saying "no" every fucking time they update the browser: fuck off.
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The moment my cryptofan buddy started talking up brave, I knew it was time to uninstall.
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It should've been as simple as stop using any chromium-based browser, but the CEO is also super bigoted, doing ad theft, and pushing crypto scams.
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Stop telling me what to do
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Don't stick your fork in the light socket!
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Now it makes sense why some of the Fox News-parroting, right wing people I know use Brave. I had no idea about what the author mentioned about the browser, I just know it is based on Chromium which I will not use. Thus, I am on Firefox. And for many reasons, including those the author laid out, I'm happy I chose wisely.
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Don't need to tell me twice. I've distrusted Brave since I saw their advertisement for it. It just feels like they sell the browser in same mood as pyramid schemers does their products.
But its just my gut feeling. Got no good reason why people should avoid the browser. And because the CEO is an ass isn't a good enough reason for most people.
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if you useanything alphabet like chromium, then YOU are the problem.
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I think it’s pretty unfair to put all of the blame on everyone who uses a chromium browser, considering that most people with a computer have no idea what the hell you are talking about.
Google Chrome is the single most popular web browser. Everyone’s work uses it, everyone’s school uses it, why would they possibly question it? And then they discover a new browser someone recommended - why would they look into “chromium” and what it all means? It’s just not reasonable to expect of nearly the entire population at this stage.
Take your anger out on the company and educate people. This is a problem of education, not selfishness (on the part of the user).
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Firefox ftw
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Isn't this like the fourth time this has been posted? the conversation always goes around in circles with nobody changing their mind.
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I never used brave. I wasn't interested in it since I learned it was chromium and all the crypto stuff.
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I used to think Brave was good until I found out they are into crypto.
Nope Nope and Nope! Not using that thing again. Firefox is my friend now.
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I don't use Brave, won't use Brave, and have my reasons for it.
- Brave is Chromium based; a project which is slave to the whim of Google.
- Brave integrates an unnecessary cryptocurrency.
- Brave does not block ads! It does not 'enhance' your privacy. It just absorbs some ads, replaces some, and blatantly lets first-party advertisements through the filter. That's not ad-blocking
- Brave does not protect your privacy. As per my previous point; it does not block ads, it injects it's own right into browser chrome! That's worse than plain Chrome! Your privacy is automatically violated when you watch/view even a single ad.
- Brave does not have many benefits above "Ungoogled Chromium" or other competing projects. It just doesn't. Unless you like marketing fluff.
- Brave is NOT BETTER THAN Firefox. It's worse; because it's Chromium; which is enslaved to Google whims. Don't believe me? Try to contribute something to Chromium that goes contrary to Google's stated goals and watch how fast you get shot down.
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Your last point is laughable.
Yes Brave cannot make commits to Chromium, but it makes changes to their own repos (well, obviously) and can also accept/reject changes Google makes to Chromium.
In my opinion, Firefox is more of a slave to Google than Brave will ever be because they rely entirely on Google giving them money for the default search engine.
Is Brave's revenue model scammy? Maybe. But at least they aren't Google little bitch.
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Article, brought to you by Google.
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Brave is chromium.
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Tf did you smoke today? I definitely want that stuff too!
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this whole thing is terribly written... lol
how about you just use which ever shitty browser you like?
and i'll use firefox
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Some counterpoints:
- I like the idea of a system where users get a share of the revenue from the ad networks, which then can be used to support other content creators or businesses online. I think that if most of the web worked like this, we wouldn't have people being treated as eyeballs and we would still have the power to vote with our wallets to choose who is actually worth of our attention. Is there any other browser or company doing anything like that?
- People keep talking about Firefox as if it's a paragon of virtue, but casually forget that they are only alive because they are completely dependent on Google to survive and are nothing more than "controlled opposition" nowadays. They also have done a ton user-hostile shit like sponsored links in the frontpage and completely crippled pocket, and let's not forget that current Mozilla execs are raking in millions while laying off people and disbanding key projects.
- The crypto part keeps called a scam, but their system has been working perfectly fine and it has always been liquid enough for me at the exchanges. Is their BAT token needed? Certainly not, and I would be fine if the 3-8 euros worth of BAT I receive every month (depending on my mobile usage and on their success as an network) were sent to me directly via SEPA. But can anyone realistically say that there is any efficient worldwide way to distribute payouts? For every dollar you sent to someone via Patreon (or Ko-Fi, or any alternative), how much do they get to keep? With the Brave creators program, all of the $15/month that I send to the different people get to them.
All in all, I will stop using Brave in a heartbeat if there is anyone else providing any alternative with a slight chance to fight Surveillance Capitalism. None of the Chromium or Mozilla forks are doing that.
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Brave's objective is to create a system that looks altruistic but they control it and take a ever increasing cut. Google started off the same way. I like the idea, but it's one that needs to be controlled by a not for profit or by the people. Giving that control to a for profit company is just repeating history.
Firefox isn't perfect, but my argument for choosing them or a fork of FF is to combat the market share of chromium based browsers. With google pushing for Web Environment Integrity (aka web DRM) using a different browser is one of the few good ways to protest.
I would also like to point out that popular open source projects often get contributions (both code and financial) from large corporations. Sometimes it's their main source of revenue. This isn't just a Mozilla problem. I wouldn't even say it is a problem. A problem would be if those contributions affect the project in a negative way.
Just like in most things these days our choices are limited to the shitty and the less shitty. Obviously where Brave and Firefox lands on that shitty spectrum will depend on your priorities, but for me at least Firefox is less shitty and far from perfect, but decent.
Edit: grammer
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Brave’s objective is to create a system that looks altruistic but they control it and take a ever increasing cut.
I don't see how? All they control is the ad network. Viewing the ads is opt-in. The ads they displayed are stored in device, and the code that selects which ads to show you is open source. The system for verifying ad views can be audited by any party. The token is on the blockchain so they can't manipulate and the contract does not have any special rules.
Assuming a world where Brave gets significant market share, the "worst" they could do would be to change the promised revenue share, but if they went to do that then users would lose the incentive to opt-in into the ads, and they would more likely lose revenue and open themselves for competition. (That's a risk that could run even if they did everything right, by the way)
using a different browser is the only good way to protest.
That is not true. "Though Brave uses Chromium, Brave browsers do not (and will not) include WEI".
A problem would be if those contributions affect the project in a negative way.
And I could make the argument this is in the case with Mozilla and Firefox. Mozilla being so dependent of Google's revenue means that they will never take any measure that could be seen by Google as a credible threat to their business. Ask yourself why Firefox never included an ad-blocker by default or has kept its mobile browser crippled for so long, or got rid of FirefoxOS...
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Orion does everything you’re asking for and has none of the baggage. Also, Safari? I mean it sucks, but it literally does what you say you want.
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I don't care what his political affiliations are, if the product works I'll use it. What an absolute set of incompetent garbage.
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Some of us do care.
A product directly bankrolled by Peter Thiel? A project, not concerned about blocking ads but rather making sure that it's their ads that you see?
If you're on iOS. Maybe the EU will bail you out and force Apple to allow other web engines.
If you're on Android, Firefox works perfectly well and Fennec is a fine fork.
If you're on anything else, Librewolf is fork of Firefox without all of the Pocket and other privacy hostile default settings.
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A project, not concerned about blocking ads but rather making sure that it’s their ads that you see?
Do you understand that it is completely opt-in and people get paid for those ads?
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I don't care what rights they want to curtail, if they say they'll lower my taxes by a nickel I'll vote for them!
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Someone's been trying to push this agenda against brave, because I've seen this same post a few weeks ago.
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It's quite annoying, especially since most of these people complaining are keyboard activists and don't do literally anything IRL
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I have stopped using Brave. Fuck those guys.
I just wish Firefox would update less frequently. It's way too often.
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You could switch to the ESR branch, which gets feature updates much less frequently.
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Thanks. A helpful response instead of a smarmy one. Refreshing.
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Try Waterfox. It is pretty good.
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Thanks.
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There is nothing wrong with Brave. It's a great browser. I like the cryptocurrency aspect of it.
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you like baked in ads, crypto, falsely using people to promote your browser... oof
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The browser works well. I am very much into crytpocurrency. I think Bitcoin and Ethereum are the future of money.
You don't need to turn on ads in Brave. It blocks ads really well.
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There is plenty wrong with Brave, the business.
Brave, the browser, is very useful in a practical sense. It has some nice features out of the box, and if you disable the naughty out of the box features it's pretty decent. However, you have to trust that each update from the developer is good, and past experience raises very serious questions with this particular business.
Maybe you might be seeing some returns from the cryptocurrency. My undestanding is that users have lost far more than they've gained - and that's before you actually look into the true value of what users are sacrificing in exchange for their tokens. Meanwhile, Brave are pulling a steady revenue making money from their users, milking them just so.
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Im just waiting for Firefox mobile to add back support for all add-ons.
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FireFox Beta and Nightly, and forks like Fennec and Mull from F-Droid support all add-ons.
https://www.androidpolice.com/firefox-beta-107-android-install-any-browser-add-on/
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Mull supports add-ons. Also has a companion to replace the system browser Android System Webview, called Mulch.
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I use Brave as a secondary browser for PWAs on the desktop. I wish Firefox would support it again.
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what do you need PWA support for? any clue why Mozilla reduced/removed support?
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There is a bugzilla entry that states the removal was due to too little user benefit for the development effort required. And since I don't necessarily need this feature, I can understand they directed the resources to where they are needed more. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have.
The way I use it is primarily for applications that produce audio output, so I get appropriately named per-app volume sliders in pulseaudio/pipewire and not just a bunch of audio streams titled “Firefox”.
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They dropped it during or right after (can't remember for sure) their massive layoffs where they fired like half of their best employees for no reason, that's also when Servo died! :(
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STOP USING JAVACRIPT
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Here’s my current problem: I use Firefox mainly, but I need a chromium browser for work occasionally. I feel like brave is better than chrome proper right? But the CEO is also terrible. Is there something I can use that’s chromium based (occasional usage) that is at least “the least bad” option?
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If you need chromium, your best option is probably ungoogled-chromium which is basically just bare bones chrome with as much telemetry and tracking taken out as possible.
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Use one of the "clean" versions of Chromium (not Chrome) from Woolyss.com
If you want updates to be handled automatically, you can use ChrLauncher
EDIT: I guess you can't use the latter on OSX.
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Ungoogled Chromium
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While I agree with this, it's kind of a pain in the ass if you use extensions. You have to roundabout install the Web Store through a crx download, tinkering in the settings and enabling dev mode, then use that extension to install other extensions. And may the cosmos grant you mercy if you need to use DRM for Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, etc, and have to download the Widevine DRM stuff separately and unzip it deep in the AppData folder.
It's not impossible, but I guess I'm just saying that this probably isn't going to be the answer for the everyday, average person.
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Vivaldi seems to be one of the least bad options.
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Vivaldi is proprietary, which makes security and privacy virtually impossible to guarantee
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If you’re on Mac I would suggest Arc browser
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Safari might be worth a try
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Cromite was suggested to me and it seems to work well: https://github.com/uazo/cromite
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I use brave because it doesn't apply chrome or edge group policies. If someone can tell me a better chromium based Browser (or firefox based) that does this, I'm all ears...
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It’s only a matter of time until Eich sells all of Brave’s users down the river.
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I use Brave as a secondary browser mostly for government websites because sometimes my firefox privacy settings breaks them and since many of them are poorly designed a technical issue over your account may result in hours on the phone to resolve.
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Why not use chromium or one of the many other chrome forks? What about Brave works better?
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Because it works, has okay configurations out of the box, and I just don't really care enough about the points mentioned in this article to make the switch. I only use it for cases where I don't expect privacy like government websites. As soon as you open an account there they got all your info anyway.
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I'm pretty sure I've read this news a couple of times now the past week or weeks?
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I currently use brave on iOS to block YouTube ads. Is there any other option right now? I’d be willing to switch.
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The best solution on iOS is Yattee. You can add Piped or Invidious instances as locations and stream ad-free YouTube from there. Another solution that doesn't involve Piped and Invidious is AdGuard. Open a YouTube link in Safari, hit actions, then hit Block YouTube Ads (by AdGuard).
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Hey, thanks for the link/suggestion for Yattee! Never knew something like this existed for iOS.
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If you don’t mind sideloading and refreshing the app from your PC every 7 days, I recommend (and use) uYou+ as a sideloaded app. It has PiP capabilities w/o needing premium, along with a built-in video downloader, sponsorblock, and adblock.
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Firefox + ublock origin.
I just clicked through a few long youtube videos without hitting any ads.edit: my apologies, I missed your iOS problem.
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They said iOS. There's no extension support in iOS Firefox.
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Name an alternative browser that has the same level of ability to block trackers built in.
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LibreWolf.
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That was easy.
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why does it need to be built in? What's wrong with downloading one extension and being set afterwards?
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bobthened
Okay, so name an extension that will provide the same level of tracker blocking as Brave does.
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mullvad browser?
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mullvad browser is a great choice
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we need a list of apps that incorporates chromium, otherwise i put sketchy apps in the app freezer to avoid them running in the background
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Steam is a huge one.
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Apparently we need separate lists for pc and android. In android u could freeze apps, idk what could be the equivalent for it on pc(linux, win,..)
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Can someone please fork brave?
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Which feature do you want that isn't already in better, Firefox-based browsers?
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When visiting the govt. Website, it says you're using unsupported browser and some feature won't work but when I use brave, I dont get that message.
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Lol seriously? I am using firefox from past 5, -8 years and never crashed once.
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sane tab management and behavior on mobile versions along with proper syncing is apparently too huge of a hurdle to handle for the devs. these two are pretty much the only reason why i still use brave and not firefox
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I'm personally like to stop using Brave, and I will, however while LibreWolf will be what I'll switch to on desktop, I'm not sure what I would want to switch to on my Android phone. I see that LibreWolf doesn't have an Android version (and potentially never will; fine, developers will do whatever they want). I've heard about IceRaven, however, I'm not sure how good it is. Also would like an actually privacy focused search engine, but I think LibreWolf might have a good list on that front.
(Note: please do suggest in replies, not sure I made that apparent)
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Check out Mull or Mulch. Mull is a more private Firefox and Mulch is a more private Chrome. They are made by the DivestOS team, they also make DivestOS which is a lot more private Android version that supports a huge number of phones. That's how I'm also runing the latest version of Android 13 with the latest security updates on a phone from 2019. And there are much older devices supported.
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Since I'll be moving to LibreWolf and it's based on FF, I'll check out Mull. Unfortunately I don't see my device on DivestOS's site (it's a Motorola Moto G Power 2022), but it's also quite new so it's understandable. I'll switch it to Lineage or something like that whenever it gets support for it but I'm fine with a degoogled Android for now.
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What do you think about Torch Browser? Falkon? Dot browser?
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Torch Browser is not open source, and it still is based on chromium. It's the worst browser combination possible.
Falkon is pretty cool! I prefer using qutebrowser if it's gonna use QtWebEngine anyway. It is slower and less featureful than the main browsers, though. If you don't mind it, I'd say go for it!
I didn't know about Dot Browser, but it looks... unfinished? It's based on Firefox, so that's cool. But it seems someone would be better off just using something like LibreWolf (or Tor if you actually want some privacy).
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Are there any brave forks that throw out all the bullshit? Bold browser seems pretty dead
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This is madness. How does this keep getting upvoted when the article has nothing to do with the actual code integrity and functionality of this browser.
At least it's open source, if there is something shady point it out in the code.
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@whou wish someone else would build an easy to set up and use chromium browser for windows that blocks telemetry and isn't run by an asshole... something i could get friends and family to use.
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