this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
1589 points (91.5% liked)

Privacy

31890 readers
567 users here now

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

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
1589
Please, do not use Brave. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.

Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.

Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.

After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL's. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.

Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I'd say the answer is a very clear no.

One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.

Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don't mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Well, 1st, your sources are are weak here. However, it is a fact Brave is also run by con artists and swindlers.

The issue many users have is compatibility. Firefox zealots ignore the fact IT folks must work with Chromium. I cannot get the tools I need to work reliably on Firefox (or LibreWolf, Mullvad, etc.).

So, within the Chromium limitation, , I work on 7 systems regularly, I must have bookmark replication, MacOS/Linux/Windows/Android support:

Ungoogled Chromium = rough, no bookmark replication Vivaldi = worse than Brave, because no full source code Opera = Chinese Iridium = Indian Brave = source code available, privacy focused Edge = lol Chrome = lol

Winner? Brave. I use it with Pi-hole DNS on my home network, forced to use it with work DNS on their networks. I do also use LibreWolf (aka Firefox) with the Mullvad extension. I use it along with Brave, and hopefully at some point I can switch. I've tried 3 times in recent years, but too many web interfaces have Firefox issues, since it's blatantly not being used to QA websites anymore.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I've had basically zero issues with website compatibility using Firefox forks. As for my sources, they can easily be cross examined with other sources, I just didn't think it was necessary to link to five different sources per allegation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm IT, and i don't use Chromium based browsers at all. What do you need as IT, and what field of IT?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

IT folks must work with Chromium.

What is the context here? Or what tools are you having issues with in Firefox?

I have no skin in this game, just curious as Firefox has been my daily driver for eons and I haven't had issues with it.