I care about my privacy, though I like it’s UI. Is it really as bad as some say?

3 points

No, brave is not bad for your privacy. There has been some controversie but no dealbreaker so far imo.

If you’re on mobile I think brave has hands down the best UX (not necessarily UI but I like it a lot), on desktop I recommend firefox, which has a lot of custom themes to choose from (https://firefoxcss-store.github.io).

I personally like and use https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

permalink
report
reply
4 points

It’s less about whether any individual thing they’ve done has been bad, more that they keep doing things and keep doing thm in sneaky ways. Every time something happened the CEO went on a marketing campaign and drummed up a bunch of new users to drown out the news story. They come across as shady, which gives the impression that it would take a relatively small sack of money for them to sell their users up the river.

Brave is better than some out of the box, but far from the best. I’d say Mull is better for mobile, which is a Firefox fork. It has a companion Android System Webview called Mulch.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

I like Firefox mostly because it’s cool to have engine competition. I mostly use the default dark theme. It looks good enough for me. I don’t look much at the top when browsing.

On android it’s still lagging behind the chromium competition. And having mismatched browsers isn’t great for syncing. So I just use Firefox on android too, good enough.

Tho, if miss matching wasn’t an issue, personally I think I would use Kiwi browser. It’s an open source chromium browser which supports chrome extensions.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
1 point

Oh for fuck’s sake brave

permalink
report
parent
reply
-13 points

Not at all.

The brave criticisms you see are mostly hot takes about crypto(icrypto jokes are super coool as of '20) but brave(foss) is as good or better than Firefox, IE or safari in terms of privacy.

Firefox can nearly match that privacy with their options, but if you like brave, easier to stick with that.

permalink
report
reply
15 points

Part of it comes down to trust. I just don’t trust Brave Inc long term - it may well be a private browser now but I don’t trust that in to the future. I don’t trust a company that Peter Thiel invests in. I don’t trust a company that has already been shady and caught redirecting traffic secretly for referrer codes. But I also don’t trust Google or Microsoft either.

I trust Firefox and Mozilla. I don’t like that they are dependent on Google revenue but I trust that they’re open and transparent about what they do, and not motivated or compromised by a desire to maximise profits for their venture capitalist investors.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-1 points

Ah, thank you, distrusting Peter thiel is at least tangentially relevant and certainly understandable(thiel-creepy brave-trustworthy?)

I would choose Firefox before ie or safari, but Firefox also sells personalized ads and tracks your keystrokes.

I like foss, and I like smaller companies. When another privacy-based browser comes along after brave sells its soul or gets too popular, I’ll support them too.

Until then, brave is doing pretty good privacy-wise, especially compared to the mainstream alts.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Firefox also sells personalized ads

Is this in reference to sponsored content on the new tab page?

and tracks your keystrokes.

Telemetry? Or something else?

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

brave has already sold its soul to crypto companies

and it does nothing that firefox with extensions can’t do

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

it has a lot of sketchy business practices and is a mediocre browser at best

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points
*

You make a vague, boring claim with neither evidence nor sources.

permalink
report
parent
reply
17 points

You’re on Lemmy. Lemmy hates Brendan Eich. Take the top comments with a grain of salt.

permalink
report
reply
25 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Folks know they’ll never be Google. Folks think they might just become crypto rich Someday Soon.

permalink
report
parent
reply
102 points

Be careful, Brave marketing team is well known for disguising themselves as users and promote their bloated crapware via comments.

They overdid it in 4chan and ended up alienating the entire community.

Then they moved to Reddit but people already started seeing Brave for what they really are, a scummy company that has been caught redhanded way to many times to be trusted.

Now they are here on Lemmy, desperately trying to get more chumps under their ad machine before BAT hits 0 and their advertising partners lose all interest.

Just say no to Brave, there are way better browsers out there, with real privacy, that won’t make you look like a hateful brainwashed-by-politics piece of shit.

permalink
report
reply
11 points

Bloated. That really nails what Brave is

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

Any examples of their stuff on 4chan?

permalink
report
parent
reply
24 points

It has an opt in option to sell ad space for some of its crypto. Some people just are offended that the option is even there.

permalink
report
reply
3 points

because that effectively make them an advertising company.

Advertising online is incompatible with privacy, there’s no reconciliation between the two. And whoever tells you otherwise, is an advertiser.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Unfortunately there’s ads in Firefox too, and they’re opt out instead of opt in. I’m certainly not a fan of it, but outside of LibreWolf until servo becomes a thing I think should be right but we’re stuck choosing lesser of multiple evils.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

there’s a huge difference: Firefox does not inject ads on the pages you visit.

Anyway, I recommend to use Librewolf or Mullvad Browser instead of Firefox.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Some people dont see it as a black and white issue.

Does firefox lose its privacy status if it takes google money and makes the default search engine google search?

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Definitely yes. Firefox is not private as provided by Mozilla. You have to use a custom user.js to disable all the tracking, or install a Firefox based browser like Librewolf or Mullvad Browser.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Privacy

!privacy@lemmy.ml

Create post

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

  • Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
  • Don’t promote proprietary software
  • Try to keep things on topic
  • If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
  • Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
  • Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

Community stats

  • 6.5K

    Monthly active users

  • 2.9K

    Posts

  • 77K

    Comments