#Brave Browser

[foone]

I see people talking about the Brave browser in the whole Firefox vs chrome debate, and while people rightly point out that it's just chromium and that they do shady cryptocurrency shit, I never see anyone point out that Brave's founder and CEO is Brandan Eich.

He founded Brave after massive protests against him becoming CEO of Mozilla, resigning after 11 days. And the reason for those protests? He donated a lot of money to the Prop 8 campaign to ban gay marriage.

So just remember: it's not just another chromium fork, it's not just a browser with cryptocurrency bullshit, it's also the browser founded by a homophobe because he got kicked out of his former organization for being a homophobe.

Also, he invented Javascript. I'm willing to believe that maybe he has grown on the gay marriage issue, and made amends for his former mistakes. But Javascript cannot be forgiven.

[autolenaphilia]

Fuck Chromium (and that includes Brave and Vivialdi)

I have made multiple posts about why you should use Firefox, and of course I get the reply "not all chromium browsers are bad, they are not all as evil as Chrome." And sure, browsers who use the chromium code are not required to do all the shady things that Google does with it.

Still, I think it's bad that chromium-based browsers are getting close to total market dominance. By this point it has made Google's competitors like Microsoft and Opera drop their own unique proprietary browser engines for chromium. Browsers are becoming a fucking monoculture at this point. And Chromium becoming the browser code base of choice empowers Google, since they are the ones who mainly develop, maintain and fund its code. It means supporting them in their quest to become an internet monopoly that can do things like drm the web itself.

So let me be clear: you are still supporting google by using chromium-based browsers. By helping out in making chromium the de facto standard for browsers, you are giving google power. They are the ones driving chromium development, they will set the standards. And those standards will be in Google's favor. They are an ad company, their goal is to kill off adblockers by making them impossible to use, first with manifest v3 for extensions and now WEI, their web drm.

Brave is a joke.

The supposed "good guy" chromium browsers people recommend are actually shady as shit.

The one i see recommended the most is Brave, and it's fucking terrible. For one thing, it is funded by right-wing techbro Brendan Eich. He was Mozilla CEO for some time, but then people found he was a massive homophobe who funded campaigns against marriage equality, and Mozilla forced him to resign. And that's why he created Brave. That's who you are supporting by using Brave.

It runs off chromium because that's the easy and lazy choice for a browser. And it's literally funded through cryptocurrency, probably the negative environmental impact is a plus in Eich's book. And its adblocker runs off the same dishonest business model as adblock plus does, it will not block ads if advertisers pay them for the privilege. This betrayal of the users is opt-in at least, and you get paid for watching ads, but it's in the aforementioned worthless crypto beans. Brave is a joke.

Vivaldi and the importance of open-source

And then there's Vivaldi, it's a freeware proprietary browser run by a for-profit company, which alone should scare you off it.

"If you aren't paying for it, you are not the customer, you are the product" is a phrase that sometimes unfairly gets applied to open source projects to dismiss them. If it's open source and either community-run or run by a non-profit foundation like the Open document foundation for Libreoffice and or the Mozilla foundation for Firefox/Thunderbird, you are safe even if it's free.

But that phrase 100% applies to free products from for-profit corporations. These companies need to make profits at some point for for their shareholders, and if it is not from selling goods or services, it comes from things like selling your user's data or "attention".

That applies to Vivaldi, who makes big promises about how they will respect their users privacy and never sell their data. But promises mean nothing, Google also says they respect your privacy. And the thing is, Vivaldi is closed source. Not entirely, ironically the bits they got from Google's chromium are open source, but other parts of their code is closed-source. And what that means is, they can make any and all promises about what their browser's code does and there is nobody except Vivaldi that can check if their code actually fulfils those promises. Only Vivaldi has access to that code.

I'm no open-source fanatic, like I don't care if some random game i install and play is closed-source, as long as it is from a credible developer. But open-source is important for security and privacy, because that means someone else other than the company who develops the program can vet it's code for vulnerabilities and privacy violations. Your browser and e-mail client (vivaldi has an e-mail client too) should be open-source for your own safety, because those programs handle sensitive data like your passwords or your e-mails. Closed-source is not more secure, since Kerckhoff's principle applies to digital security and privacy.

And Vivaldi by being proprietary software fails that test. Their own justification is that being closed-source is "their first line of defense, to prevent other parties from taking the code and building an equivalent browser (essentially a fork) too easily." It's the same hypocritical argument that Red Hat used to justify making their Enterprise Linux distro closed-source. "It's fine if we use chromium's code to build our own browser, and expressly for making an Opera clone (that's the literal point of Vivaldi, that's why the name is a music reference), but if someone does the same with our product, they're evil." It's nauseating and alone justification to distrust Vivaldi as it is crying out to be trusted.

Listen to some Antonio Vivaldi instead, his music slaps. And install Firefox and Thunderbird instead.

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Portal 1 GLaDOS-themed fork of the Brave browser, named Murder.

This isn't Brave. It's Murder.

[moominvalerie]

please please please PLEASE i know people are trying to be helpful and promote privacy and thats GREAT!!! but the amount of people i see saying stuff like "just use Brave lol" pains me. Brave is based on chromium, the same framework chrome uses, its created and maintained BY GOOGLE which means at any point they can add or take away something to the framework that will affect *everyone* using chrome, edge, operaGX and yes, Brave (like with manifestV3) I think this is spread by the amount of youtubers getting sponsored by it,,,idk but people mean it when they say the ONLY competition to chrome is firefox.

[creamated]

can we get like one good browser. just one.

[generallemarc]

Do you want to help people in countries with censored internet?

Install the Snowflake browser extension to help people access the uncensored internet by using your computer's signature! I'm 95% sure there's one for Firefox too, and it comes bundled in with Brave-just go into the settings and turn it on! All you have to do is have a working PC with internet access and live in a country with low internet censorship. Brave even has an option to let it do it's thing even when you don't have the browser open, so that you can be doing this literally as long as your computer is on. Would not recommend using it on Opera though, as Opera is Chinese-owned and is thus not something you should ever have on your computer.

[brave-browser-the-official]

WOE, GIMMICK BLOG BE UPON YE.

I am Brave. It is a pleasure to exist. I call upon my fellow browsers and search engines.

@offical-firefox-nightly @firefox-official @bingle-official @realsafari @operagxreal @totally-official-yahoo @totally-bing @the-real-ecosia @the-real-google @true-opera-gx @yahooo-official @incognito-mode-official @the-tumblur-searchbar @yandex-search-fr @definitely-tor-browser-official

And yes, I must make my presence here known.

[ladypriere]

REMINDERS:

you cannot hate youtube enough

adblockers are considered necessary by the fucking FEDS. you think these sites vet this shit properly?

always consider alternative sites (odysee, etc), as competition is the only thing that can knock YT down a peg

NEVER pay for premium

adblockers work on Firefox and Brave mobile, so don't use the youtube app

there is also Brave NewPipe, which is an offshoot of NewPipe that has Sponsorblock built in, for your phone

if you're an animator, Newgrounds still exists and is arguably a better platform for you anyway. It's also only $2.99 a month to (optionally) support the site, and it doesn't have a shitty algorithm that prioritizes content slop over actual art and effort

there's also Smart Tube for watching youtube on tv (this requires enabling dev mode on Firestick to allow downloading non-store APKs. have not figured out samsung or roku tvs myself yet). also comes with adblocker and sponsorblock

have a nice day, everyone 😁

[koolcatzblog]

I tried using brave browser for a week but I can not in good faith use a browser which thinks it's a good idea to spam you with web3 ads using push notifications in exchange for 0.0001 made up money.

[netscapenavigator-official]

I switched to Safari on iOS as my YouTube & Tumblr browser, finally replacing Brave. Something about it was causing issues, and tabs were getting stuck in an infinite loading and crashing loop.

Idk if trading an open-source crypto bro browser for a proprietary normal browser was the right call, but oh well. At least it actually functions.

[daniel-nerd]

now that google is apparently killing its own search engine, this is my time to remind to y’all that brave search exist! and it is pretty darn close to google(if we ignore the photos), the brave team also do amazing job at improving it!! and their AI overview is actually functional and usually give you what you were looking for!!

blah blah blah brave shilling blah blah blah but seriously it’s pretty darn good, its like the better but less known brother of ddg. and they’re very much pro user privacy, and already proved they’re a pretty good company to trust with your internet activities, by making one of the best browsers and ad blockers.

and yes, they have their issues, and there’s the crypto stuff, but considering the alternatives are either barely functioning(i look at you opera and bing) or google, i think its a way better option.

lastly, they have a way better logo!! a cute lion is a billion times better than some colored letters

[mirqmarq428]

I believe your Firefox propaganda.

I am still using Brave. Wake me up when Firefox adds:

Visually colored, collapsible tab groups

A drop-in config file I can stick inside .mozilla and it just works including installing extensions OR

Account-less sync (brave has a sync chain system that I like very much)

These 2.5 features are completely non-negotiable for me.

[ghduck]

That's a really weird looking giraffe here

[toraleistripe]

Decided to try out the Brave browser since I've heard good things about it. Plus I like the idea of having a few different browsers to use. I still love Firefox though and will always keep it on my computer no matter what.

Just felt like giving Brave a shot and see what it's like xD