20 ms·

Brave Isn't Bad

87 points by smnthermes 7y ago

nif2ee 7y ago
If I am going to use Chrome/Chromium then I am just going to use Chrome/Chromium and spend 10 more seconds and install ublock. No reason to use a themed Chromium by a company that literally announces itself to investors (among which Peter Thiel who has obviously personal issues with Google founders) as an advertising platform with a cryptoscam if it didn't work.
- turblety 7y ago
  I'm not too sure what ublock does entirely, but it seems to focus more on blocking content of the site. Like images, iframes, scripts, etc. Chrome does a lot of calling home. Like, a LOT [1][2]. For example, it checks sites are "safe" (as according to Google's standards) running every website you visit through their servers. Brave tries to disable most of this. 1. https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium 2. https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traffic-results/ https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traff...
  - caymanjim 7y ago
    uBlock is the go-to "it just works" ad-blocker for Chrome. Everyone used to use AdBlock Plus, but then they started running a protection racket where advertisers could buy whitelisting.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    Brave uses the same safe browsing implementation as Chrome. > running every website you visit through their servers. That's not how it works.
    - turblety 7y ago
      Feel free to add some more facts/sources/links to prove your claim please. Brave proxies requests [1] to Google to ensure they do not get the details of the website you are visiting. 1. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Proxy-redirected-URLs https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Proxy-redirected...
      - lern_too_spel 7y ago
        The proxy doesn't modify the request. It just hides who it is coming from. That just means Brave knows who it is coming from instead of Google.
  - mthoms 7y ago
    >it checks sites are "safe" (as according to Google's standards) running every website you visit through their servers. It only sends a partial hash of the url/domain. It's not feasible to deduce browsing history from the hash.
- pilif 7y ago
  uBlock will stop working in Chrome as they got to Manifest v3
liamcardenas 7y ago
> But Brave is based on Chromium! > Chromium is open source and all Google tracking can easily be disabled. Brave strips out all of this by default. Remember that Chromium is not the same as Chrome. Sorry, but this is not a satisfactory explanation to me. Brave is marketed as the pro-decentralization/good web citizen browser. Yet, it uses Chromium, which contributes to Google’s dominance over the web — pushing developers to further neglect Firefox and other browsers as a target. Also, where is Brave’s innovation? I see none. Instead, I support Mozilla.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  A key part of why Mozilla succeeded in somewhat resurrecting the web was that it was good, when compared with Internet Explorer. Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. The Firefox UI is more complex and not any more powerful; the excuse used to be that they supported more deeply-integrated extensions, but that's mostly dead now. With regard to "dominance over the web", Firefox is riddled with compliance bugs and misbehaviours, many of which go unaddressed for years, these bugs and incompatibilities have forced me to disable features for Firefox users, or find workarounds, over the years. > Also, where is Brave’s innovation? I see none. Instead, I support Mozilla. Where is Mozilla's innovation today? They maintain a broken, slightly-differentiated Netscape clone, and have an unmistakable chip on their shoulder; but there is no substantial benefit to using Mozilla, and there are some serious drawbacks that Mozilla could avoid if they cared. Brave is at least doing something interesting, with an innovative compensation model which has some hope to reduce reliance on surveillance-driven advertising, and they put a Tor client in the default distribution (even if the browser does not implement some of the anti-fingerprinting measures that Tor Browser does). On top of this all, Brave is differentiating on what matters, rather than taking up the pointless task of maintaining similarly-licensed, lower quality implementations of various web standards. If Google gains power over the web with Chromium, in some vague way, then Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork Chromium). Rust is a spectacular thing they've done, but at the end of the day, any argument for using Mozilla should begin with a long list of positive characteristics of the product, and not with vague platitudes about implementation diversity.
Simon_says 7y ago
Ads in and of themselves are bad, even without tracking. My time and attention are the only truly limited resources I have. Hijacking those to make me desire things I don’t need reduces my quality of life. Secondarily, ads corrupt every media outlet they touch. To hell with all of them.
- naasking 7y ago
  And you can opt out of ads by buying their coin to distribute to sites that require payment.
  - jki275 7y ago
    Or I can run an ad blocker and they can go fuck themselves.
    - naasking 7y ago
      Sure, and thanks for contributing to the decline of the free web.
      - Simon_says 7y ago
        Ads are the decline of the free web.
        naasking 7y ago
        Yeah, no. The ad model driven by broken financial incentives and broken browsers that leak privacy everywhere is what broke the web. Fixing those incentives and fixing the browser fixes the actual problem. Free content still costs money to host. If I can't write about cool programming or science projects for free, like having my hosting paid by ads, I very likely won't write it at all, and the web would be all the poorer for it if everyone in similar shoes reaches the same logical conclusion.
      - jki275 7y ago
te_chris 7y ago
Just use Firefox. The fact that these posts are even needed says everything about the choice you’re making.
- samantohermes 7y ago
  Herd mentality much?
yellow_lead 7y ago
> But Brave whitelists Facebook and Twitter trackers! > This is only partly true. Brave whitelists some Facebook and Twitter trackers because blocking them outright would break buttons on some websites (e.g. the Facebook like buttons). Brave is meant to be easy to use, breaking a lot of websites is not easy to use. Brave was never meant to be a max privacy solution. > The whitelist is now optional and can easily be disabled in the settings. Opt out features like this don't respect your privacy.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  Clicking on a Facebook button doesn't contribute to your privacy. If you're going to click it, it needs to work. If you're not going to click it, it doesn't matter. Opt out is the best option here
  - SXX 7y ago
    If nothing has changed over years this is just not how it works. As long as like button and it's scripts present on page Facebook will be tracking you. You dont need to click on button to activate it and this is the problem.
    - Semaphor 7y ago
      we have fb like buttons at work (which gets disabled by the fb container extension), but using the js version is a choice (by the website operator). An fb like button can be a normal link with certain query parameters which we have used for years.
      - SXX 7y ago
        I actually used social buttons without tracking for my own projects: https://sharingbuttons.io/ https://sharingbuttons.io/ Problem is that most of websites just use default solutions that FB and Twitter provide that do enable invasive tracking.
        7y ago
mindfulhack 7y ago
This had the effect of making me realise Brave is not the answer. If you don't mind some UI inferiority, Firefox is the answer.
- Semaphor 7y ago
  what ui inferiority?
  - mindfulhack 7y ago
    I can't re-arrange add-on icons with a simple drag and drop of the mouse. That limitation alone holds me back.
    - U8dcN7vx 7y ago
      Yes you can, but you need to select "customize..." first, i.e., you want to customize the interface.
      - mindfulhack 7y ago
        That's what I'm talking about, it's way too inconvenient to have to enter that clunky 'Customise' window (and then close it ooff) just in order to drag an icon out of the way of my existing corner icons. I try new add-ons all the time for temporary or small functions. It's little things like this that make the everyday experience a deal-breaker. FF has come a long way - e.g. not requiring restarts for add-ons anymore - but there's still more things to fix. I literally check this one feature (draggability of add-on buttons) about once a month, because there's a great to deal gain with Firefox due to privacy.
        Semaphor 7y ago
        I just checked Chrome, apparently it doesn't support moving anything but extension icons? I far prefer the FF approach (also because of accidental moving)
arkanciscan 7y ago
> they use Google by default I currently use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine because Brave's Private mode uses it by default. I had heard of DDG before, but I assumed that Google was better. When I saw that it really works just as well, I decided to switch.
- smitty1e 7y ago
  I like DDG but, when I'm looking for answers to technical questions, I sell my soul to Sergey. Google gets me to the solution far more rapidly.
  - samantohermes 7y ago
    Isn't it better to search for technical questions and corresponding answers on Q&A websites?
    - detaro 7y ago
      No, because they do not capture all the technical knowledge available online. If they have relevant data, a search engine will hopefully surface it.
- kilroy_jones 7y ago
  DDG works for most stuff, but I've found Google to be better for niche topics and for anything related to a forum content. When searching for "reddit" + something else Google does a better job.
- blululu 7y ago
  My understanding is that Duck Duck Go is more or less a non personalized Bing search with paid upranking for Amazon products. As it is Bing is pretty solid, though the privacy boost DDG provides is not worth the drop in quality.
brobinson 7y ago
Does Brave still fail fingerprinting tests in a comically bad fashion? Last time I looked at Brave, it appeared to be pretty bad for privacy fingerprinting-wise compared to Firefox and (surprisingly) Chrome.
- pes10k 7y ago
  Hi, I do privacy research at Brave. Our fingerprinting protections are still being improved (our second round of FP defenses should hit nightly in Jan), but the comments here are wrong; our defenses are much better than Firefox and Chrome. We don't consider as part of our threat model preventing sites from knowing you're using Brave. I'm not aware of any browser or tool that considers this as part of their privacy threat model either (including the terrific Tor Browser Bundle). Our goal is to prevent sites from distinguishing between Brave users. My claim is that our fingerprinting protections are strictly stronger than Firefox and Chrome. A partial list of fingerprinting protections that are enabled by default in Brave are at [1]. Fingerprinting is tricky, and we're tacking the problem in on multiple dimensions. We need to go further, and expect to have v2 of our defenses in nightly in the next month or two [2], but we're also leading efforts in W3C to address fingerprinting in standards (I'm snyderp, those are my / Brave issues identifying privacy harm in standards) [3], and we're pushing hard to prevent web standards and privacy efforts from being eaten up by vaporware [4]. So, all that is to say, Brave has the most aggressive fingerprinting protections of any general purpose browser, and is getting better. The naysayers are welcome to backup their claims ;) 1: https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/wiki/Fingerprinting-Protection-Mode https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/wiki/Fingerprinting-... 2: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/5614 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/5614 3: https://github.com/w3cping/tracking-issues/issues https://github.com/w3cping/tracking-issues/issues 4: https://brave.com/brave-fingerprinting-and-privacy-budgets/ https://brave.com/brave-fingerprinting-and-privacy-budgets/
- zenexer 7y ago
  Yes. Despite their efforts, it remains trivial to detect Brave as well as fingerprint individual users. I’m pretty sure the only reason they don’t expose it in the UA is because you can then calculate just how much of a scam it is. Their payouts are laughably low.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
johnpowell 7y ago
https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/adshero_1.png https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/adshero_1.png That is a image from: https://brave.com/brave-ads-waitlist/ https://brave.com/brave-ads-waitlist/ Notice the page is about the Grammys and the ad is about the Grammys. This is important. So Brave strips the ads from my site and inserts their own as (even more annoying system notifications). And they are relevant to the page so now my visitors might think I was the dick that triggered a notification that must be dismissed. And If I want a cut I have to sign up for some rando cryptocurrency company, the bastions of ethics and security. Please Brave. Use a unique user agent string so I can just block people using your browser. And I don't care if people block ads, I do too. But when you get desperate and start showing ads for dildos on my site discussing cross-cut table-saw blades I'm not going to be a happy camper.
- Passthepeas 7y ago
  Not only that, but the token they use was distributed via ICO, meaning it is highly centralized and potentially will be subject to securities legislation in the future. Completely ignores the ethos crypto currencies started with.
- judge2020 7y ago
  It feels like these "debunks" aren't debunking the claims but rather explanations trying to put you at ease. For example, "Auto-updates are not directly anti-privacy" is obvious, but some people want to disable auto-updates since they might not want new, potentially privacy-violating updates added to the browser. You can't look through the changelog (or better: the GitHub diff) before downloading an update if you can't disable auto-update. Same for "But Brave has a backdoor!", auto-update is by definition a backdoor for running code the user hasn't ran before. The only reason most people are fine with Google's auto-updates and weary of Brave's auto-updates is because Brave isn't as trustworthy or well-established in terms of "does this company have incentive to push malicious code to my machine or will they potentially be compromised or bought out".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 7y ago
thenewnewguy 7y ago
> But Brave has a backdoor! > No it doesn't. Brave is open source and there has been no backdoor ever found. Many people claim that Brave being able to use custom HTTP headers are a backdoor but this isn't true. HTTP headers are allowed as per RFC 7231. See Brendan Eich's response to this. This has got to be a joke, right? Nobody's claiming that Brave 'using custom HTTP headers' is not allowed in the HTTP spec, the problem is that Brave downloads a list of headers to inject into requests for specific websites. I'm not sure I'd call this a "backdoor", but considering it cannot (to my knowledge) be disabled it at least deserves a conversation. Trying to minimize the complaint with "it's allowed in the HTTP spec" is insane.
colordrops 7y ago
The comments in this thread are ironic considering the content of the post. Brave exposes controls for all of its privacy and crypto features and you can easily opt in or out of anything that concerns you, making it a great choice for privacy. It really smacks of hypocrisy that everyone is all for multitude of open source solutions, except when it comes to browsers. Mozilla has made many misteps regarding privacy and I've never seen attacks like this. To say that browser wars are political is an understatement. Even assuming the worst, that being that Brave is trying to track you and build an ad network rivaling Google, that still seems in sum total a good thing. Google has gone down a dark path completely unchecked with their unimaginable omniscience and ad revenue, and I welcome an attack on their monopoly.
- nif2ee 7y ago
  Brave is not even a browser, it is just a rebranded Chrome that advertises itself to users as a "browser" while its main publicity is nothing but an unhinged attack on the very same company that built the browser it's rebranding. On the other hand Firefox IS A browser and Mozilla is a non-profit.
  - fredsanford 7y ago
    Nice revisionist history you got there... Chrome is just a rebranded KDE Konqueror if your logic holds.
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      Brave didn't make any changes to the underlying engine. Chrome has, at this point, basically rewritten it.
      - vorticalbox 7y ago
        No but it made a lot of changes I terms of ad blocking and privacy.
  - sys_64738 7y ago
throwGuardian 7y ago
Disclaimer: not associated with brave in any way. Facts: 1. Brave's tracking degree is little to none, compared to Google/Microsoft(edge). 2. Brave is the only browser that splits ad revenue with the user, and pays creators a higher percentage, compared to the AdSenses of the world. On top of that, brave ads aren't distracting, are generally of high quality and non intrusive to the browsing experience. I've personally earned more than $50 in aggregate this year using brave, and tipped a 100% of that to sites and content I consume often. Both the creators and I are happy costumers of brave.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > On top of that, brave ads aren't distracting, are generally of high quality and non intrusive to the browsing experience. Native notifications are incredibly distracting and intrusive.
- sheogorath 7y ago
  The problem with brave is that it takes away creators freedom of choice when it comes to revenue for their content. It's nicely summed up in this article: https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html TL;DR: Creators have to sign-up to brave's BAT system in order to get revenue for ads that Brave embeds on the creator's website. And even then there is a competition upon creators for users to spend money on them which is not correclating with the time users spend on creator's content.
  - pricci 7y ago
    The thing is that, in my experience, Brave does not embeds ads on the creator's page. It shows system alerts with the ads.
- Proven 7y ago
  sheogorath is right - Brave doesn't pay creators anything unless they enter a business relationship with them, but it nevertheless collects that revenue
saagarjha 7y ago
> Their home page (their website, not the browser's home page) contains analytics because they want to see what type of users are using their service, how many etc. Analytics are used virtually everywhere and are a nice way to gain information about how much traffic your website is recieving. Additionally, Brave's tracker blocker blocks this tracker anyway. Then why have it? Just because “everyone is doing it, so we should too, even though it’s antithetical to our goals”?
upofadown 7y ago
I am unable to use any Chrome/Chromium based browser due to one stupid and trivial characteristic. When you spawn a new session of Chrome/Chromium the resulting window/tab steals focus. That means that if you do so from some sort of terminal based program you are pointlessly left sitting there with the cursor still in the terminal window but with the focus on the browser window. If you were hoping to spawn more than one new browser session (say from a RSS reader), well, you are not doing that. Firefox has an obscure option that can be used to turn off this obnoxious behaviour. So I must use Firefox.
- PhilippGille 7y ago
  What OS are you using? At least on Windows there's a Win32 API to change window focus: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10898560/how-to-set-focus-to-another-window https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10898560/how-to-set-focu... On macOS maybe this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41309910/how-to-regain-set-focus-in-a-mac-os-swift-application https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41309910/how-to-regain-s...
Angeo34 7y ago
Anyone using Brave should be aware that Brave are known to use Bots on HN and on 4chan to spam pro Brave messages. If that isn't enough of an indicator how trustworthy their business is then I don't know. Currently there is not a singular reason to use Brave over Chrome. The only thing Brave does is bundle an adblocker and Brave is slightly easier to fingerprint than Chrome. There is no other difference. By default you will have less privacy with Brave than with Chrome due to fingerprinting.
- samantohermes 7y ago
  > The only thing Brave does is bundle an adblocker and Brave is slightly easier to fingerprint than Chrome. There is no other difference. Brave uses the same user agent of Chrome.
  - Angeo34 7y ago
    So did I say anything about user agents? Why are people that desperate to defend Brave? I get there are lots of Brave bots but apparently there also are genuinely disillusioned users. Brave is way way way easier to fingerprint than Chrome. This alone makes it worse to use than Chrome without an adblocker at all.
    - samantohermes 7y ago
      Provide evidence. I don't even use Brave, I just wanted to demonstrate the hate against Brave coming from Firefox fanboys.
- dang 7y ago
  > known to use Bots on HN That breaks the site guideline against insinuating astroturfing, shillage, etc., without evidence. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... and don't do this here.
SimplePotato 7y ago
Any developers out there, using it day to day?
- ironarm 7y ago
  Yes, I am. It's been my primary browser for the last 14 months. It works the same as chrome for web development. I like the built in privacy features, but still use ublock, umatrix and privacy badger in conjunction with built in features. It's extremely snappy. I have some qualms about their BAT model, but I am opted into ads and have set wikipedia and several favorite sites to auto donate. I've also cashed out about half of it myself (about $30 of $60 this year). The ads themselves are crudely targeted. They claim the browser profiles your visits locally. Basically, visit opted in programming sites, get programming ads. It doesn't feel spooky and the ads are not intrusive. I would use this without the BAT model or crypto wallets, but use both of those features all the time but it's just a bonus. The most important thing to me is that it's chrome dev tools without Google. Chrome is straight up scary. * Also, native tor windows are handy for testing ;)
buboard 7y ago
Brave is the most disruptive thing to happen on the web in 15 years. The discussion about tracking is almost irrelevant - adblocking is the bait that brave uses which will take us from google's web to a web where every visitor can directly pay the creator to read anything on the web. It's almost comical to watch HN melting against brave because it's threatening the profits of their bosses. I personally hope the best for them and i 'll be doing my best to promote it.
- dang 7y ago
  > HN melting against brave because it's threatening the profits of their bosses That breaks the site guidelines. Please read and follow them, no matter how wrong you feel other commenters are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
onyva 7y ago
Basically every reasoning they give for why Brave is not as bad as it seems, seems to demonstrate exactly that point. Literally. Starting with “they clearly state in their privacy policy that their ads do not track you”. Great. Sure. Argument won decidedly.

87 points by smnthermes 7y ago

If I am going to use Chrome/Chromium then I am just going to use Chrome/Chromium and spend 10 more seconds and install ublock. No reason to use a themed Chromium by a company that literally announces itself to investors (among which Peter Thiel who has obviously personal issues with Google founders) as an advertising platform with a cryptoscam if it didn't work.

turblety 7y ago
I'm not too sure what ublock does entirely, but it seems to focus more on blocking content of the site. Like images, iframes, scripts, etc. Chrome does a lot of calling home. Like, a LOT [1][2]. For example, it checks sites are "safe" (as according to Google's standards) running every website you visit through their servers. Brave tries to disable most of this. 1. https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium 2. https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traffic-results/ https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traff...
- caymanjim 7y ago
  uBlock is the go-to "it just works" ad-blocker for Chrome. Everyone used to use AdBlock Plus, but then they started running a protection racket where advertisers could buy whitelisting.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  Brave uses the same safe browsing implementation as Chrome. > running every website you visit through their servers. That's not how it works.
  - turblety 7y ago
    Feel free to add some more facts/sources/links to prove your claim please. Brave proxies requests [1] to Google to ensure they do not get the details of the website you are visiting. 1. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Proxy-redirected-URLs https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Proxy-redirected...
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      The proxy doesn't modify the request. It just hides who it is coming from. That just means Brave knows who it is coming from instead of Google.
- mthoms 7y ago
  >it checks sites are "safe" (as according to Google's standards) running every website you visit through their servers. It only sends a partial hash of the url/domain. It's not feasible to deduce browsing history from the hash.
pilif 7y ago
uBlock will stop working in Chrome as they got to Manifest v3

liamcardenas 7y ago

> But Brave is based on Chromium! > Chromium is open source and all Google tracking can easily be disabled. Brave strips out all of this by default. Remember that Chromium is not the same as Chrome. Sorry, but this is not a satisfactory explanation to me. Brave is marketed as the pro-decentralization/good web citizen browser. Yet, it uses Chromium, which contributes to Google’s dominance over the web — pushing developers to further neglect Firefox and other browsers as a target. Also, where is Brave’s innovation? I see none. Instead, I support Mozilla.

microcolonel 7y ago
A key part of why Mozilla succeeded in somewhat resurrecting the web was that it was good, when compared with Internet Explorer. Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. The Firefox UI is more complex and not any more powerful; the excuse used to be that they supported more deeply-integrated extensions, but that's mostly dead now. With regard to "dominance over the web", Firefox is riddled with compliance bugs and misbehaviours, many of which go unaddressed for years, these bugs and incompatibilities have forced me to disable features for Firefox users, or find workarounds, over the years. > Also, where is Brave’s innovation? I see none. Instead, I support Mozilla. Where is Mozilla's innovation today? They maintain a broken, slightly-differentiated Netscape clone, and have an unmistakable chip on their shoulder; but there is no substantial benefit to using Mozilla, and there are some serious drawbacks that Mozilla could avoid if they cared. Brave is at least doing something interesting, with an innovative compensation model which has some hope to reduce reliance on surveillance-driven advertising, and they put a Tor client in the default distribution (even if the browser does not implement some of the anti-fingerprinting measures that Tor Browser does). On top of this all, Brave is differentiating on what matters, rather than taking up the pointless task of maintaining similarly-licensed, lower quality implementations of various web standards. If Google gains power over the web with Chromium, in some vague way, then Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork Chromium). Rust is a spectacular thing they've done, but at the end of the day, any argument for using Mozilla should begin with a long list of positive characteristics of the product, and not with vague platitudes about implementation diversity.

Simon_says 7y ago

Ads in and of themselves are bad, even without tracking. My time and attention are the only truly limited resources I have. Hijacking those to make me desire things I don’t need reduces my quality of life. Secondarily, ads corrupt every media outlet they touch. To hell with all of them.

naasking 7y ago
And you can opt out of ads by buying their coin to distribute to sites that require payment.
- jki275 7y ago
  Or I can run an ad blocker and they can go fuck themselves.
  - naasking 7y ago
    Sure, and thanks for contributing to the decline of the free web.
    - Simon_says 7y ago
      Ads are the decline of the free web.
      - naasking 7y ago
        Yeah, no. The ad model driven by broken financial incentives and broken browsers that leak privacy everywhere is what broke the web. Fixing those incentives and fixing the browser fixes the actual problem. Free content still costs money to host. If I can't write about cool programming or science projects for free, like having my hosting paid by ads, I very likely won't write it at all, and the web would be all the poorer for it if everyone in similar shoes reaches the same logical conclusion.
    - jki275 7y ago

te_chris 7y ago

Just use Firefox. The fact that these posts are even needed says everything about the choice you’re making.

samantohermes 7y ago
Herd mentality much?

yellow_lead 7y ago

> But Brave whitelists Facebook and Twitter trackers! > This is only partly true. Brave whitelists some Facebook and Twitter trackers because blocking them outright would break buttons on some websites (e.g. the Facebook like buttons). Brave is meant to be easy to use, breaking a lot of websites is not easy to use. Brave was never meant to be a max privacy solution. > The whitelist is now optional and can easily be disabled in the settings. Opt out features like this don't respect your privacy.

huffmsa 7y ago
Clicking on a Facebook button doesn't contribute to your privacy. If you're going to click it, it needs to work. If you're not going to click it, it doesn't matter. Opt out is the best option here
- SXX 7y ago
  If nothing has changed over years this is just not how it works. As long as like button and it's scripts present on page Facebook will be tracking you. You dont need to click on button to activate it and this is the problem.
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    we have fb like buttons at work (which gets disabled by the fb container extension), but using the js version is a choice (by the website operator). An fb like button can be a normal link with certain query parameters which we have used for years.
    - SXX 7y ago
      I actually used social buttons without tracking for my own projects: https://sharingbuttons.io/ https://sharingbuttons.io/ Problem is that most of websites just use default solutions that FB and Twitter provide that do enable invasive tracking.
      - 7y ago

mindfulhack 7y ago

This had the effect of making me realise Brave is not the answer. If you don't mind some UI inferiority, Firefox is the answer.

Semaphor 7y ago
what ui inferiority?
- mindfulhack 7y ago
  I can't re-arrange add-on icons with a simple drag and drop of the mouse. That limitation alone holds me back.
  - U8dcN7vx 7y ago
    Yes you can, but you need to select "customize..." first, i.e., you want to customize the interface.
    - mindfulhack 7y ago
      That's what I'm talking about, it's way too inconvenient to have to enter that clunky 'Customise' window (and then close it ooff) just in order to drag an icon out of the way of my existing corner icons. I try new add-ons all the time for temporary or small functions. It's little things like this that make the everyday experience a deal-breaker. FF has come a long way - e.g. not requiring restarts for add-ons anymore - but there's still more things to fix. I literally check this one feature (draggability of add-on buttons) about once a month, because there's a great to deal gain with Firefox due to privacy.
      - Semaphor 7y ago
        I just checked Chrome, apparently it doesn't support moving anything but extension icons? I far prefer the FF approach (also because of accidental moving)

arkanciscan 7y ago

> they use Google by default I currently use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine because Brave's Private mode uses it by default. I had heard of DDG before, but I assumed that Google was better. When I saw that it really works just as well, I decided to switch.

smitty1e 7y ago
I like DDG but, when I'm looking for answers to technical questions, I sell my soul to Sergey. Google gets me to the solution far more rapidly.
- samantohermes 7y ago
  Isn't it better to search for technical questions and corresponding answers on Q&A websites?
  - detaro 7y ago
    No, because they do not capture all the technical knowledge available online. If they have relevant data, a search engine will hopefully surface it.
kilroy_jones 7y ago
DDG works for most stuff, but I've found Google to be better for niche topics and for anything related to a forum content. When searching for "reddit" + something else Google does a better job.
blululu 7y ago
My understanding is that Duck Duck Go is more or less a non personalized Bing search with paid upranking for Amazon products. As it is Bing is pretty solid, though the privacy boost DDG provides is not worth the drop in quality.

brobinson 7y ago

Does Brave still fail fingerprinting tests in a comically bad fashion? Last time I looked at Brave, it appeared to be pretty bad for privacy fingerprinting-wise compared to Firefox and (surprisingly) Chrome.

pes10k 7y ago
Hi, I do privacy research at Brave. Our fingerprinting protections are still being improved (our second round of FP defenses should hit nightly in Jan), but the comments here are wrong; our defenses are much better than Firefox and Chrome. We don't consider as part of our threat model preventing sites from knowing you're using Brave. I'm not aware of any browser or tool that considers this as part of their privacy threat model either (including the terrific Tor Browser Bundle). Our goal is to prevent sites from distinguishing between Brave users. My claim is that our fingerprinting protections are strictly stronger than Firefox and Chrome. A partial list of fingerprinting protections that are enabled by default in Brave are at [1]. Fingerprinting is tricky, and we're tacking the problem in on multiple dimensions. We need to go further, and expect to have v2 of our defenses in nightly in the next month or two [2], but we're also leading efforts in W3C to address fingerprinting in standards (I'm snyderp, those are my / Brave issues identifying privacy harm in standards) [3], and we're pushing hard to prevent web standards and privacy efforts from being eaten up by vaporware [4]. So, all that is to say, Brave has the most aggressive fingerprinting protections of any general purpose browser, and is getting better. The naysayers are welcome to backup their claims ;) 1: https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/wiki/Fingerprinting-Protection-Mode https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/wiki/Fingerprinting-... 2: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/5614 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/5614 3: https://github.com/w3cping/tracking-issues/issues https://github.com/w3cping/tracking-issues/issues 4: https://brave.com/brave-fingerprinting-and-privacy-budgets/ https://brave.com/brave-fingerprinting-and-privacy-budgets/
zenexer 7y ago
Yes. Despite their efforts, it remains trivial to detect Brave as well as fingerprint individual users. I’m pretty sure the only reason they don’t expose it in the UA is because you can then calculate just how much of a scam it is. Their payouts are laughably low.

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johnpowell 7y ago

https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/adshero_1.png https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/adshero_1.png That is a image from: https://brave.com/brave-ads-waitlist/ https://brave.com/brave-ads-waitlist/ Notice the page is about the Grammys and the ad is about the Grammys. This is important. So Brave strips the ads from my site and inserts their own as (even more annoying system notifications). And they are relevant to the page so now my visitors might think I was the dick that triggered a notification that must be dismissed. And If I want a cut I have to sign up for some rando cryptocurrency company, the bastions of ethics and security. Please Brave. Use a unique user agent string so I can just block people using your browser. And I don't care if people block ads, I do too. But when you get desperate and start showing ads for dildos on my site discussing cross-cut table-saw blades I'm not going to be a happy camper.

Passthepeas 7y ago
Not only that, but the token they use was distributed via ICO, meaning it is highly centralized and potentially will be subject to securities legislation in the future. Completely ignores the ethos crypto currencies started with.
judge2020 7y ago
It feels like these "debunks" aren't debunking the claims but rather explanations trying to put you at ease. For example, "Auto-updates are not directly anti-privacy" is obvious, but some people want to disable auto-updates since they might not want new, potentially privacy-violating updates added to the browser. You can't look through the changelog (or better: the GitHub diff) before downloading an update if you can't disable auto-update. Same for "But Brave has a backdoor!", auto-update is by definition a backdoor for running code the user hasn't ran before. The only reason most people are fine with Google's auto-updates and weary of Brave's auto-updates is because Brave isn't as trustworthy or well-established in terms of "does this company have incentive to push malicious code to my machine or will they potentially be compromised or bought out".
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thenewnewguy 7y ago

> But Brave has a backdoor! > No it doesn't. Brave is open source and there has been no backdoor ever found. Many people claim that Brave being able to use custom HTTP headers are a backdoor but this isn't true. HTTP headers are allowed as per RFC 7231. See Brendan Eich's response to this. This has got to be a joke, right? Nobody's claiming that Brave 'using custom HTTP headers' is not allowed in the HTTP spec, the problem is that Brave downloads a list of headers to inject into requests for specific websites. I'm not sure I'd call this a "backdoor", but considering it cannot (to my knowledge) be disabled it at least deserves a conversation. Trying to minimize the complaint with "it's allowed in the HTTP spec" is insane.

colordrops 7y ago

The comments in this thread are ironic considering the content of the post. Brave exposes controls for all of its privacy and crypto features and you can easily opt in or out of anything that concerns you, making it a great choice for privacy. It really smacks of hypocrisy that everyone is all for multitude of open source solutions, except when it comes to browsers. Mozilla has made many misteps regarding privacy and I've never seen attacks like this. To say that browser wars are political is an understatement. Even assuming the worst, that being that Brave is trying to track you and build an ad network rivaling Google, that still seems in sum total a good thing. Google has gone down a dark path completely unchecked with their unimaginable omniscience and ad revenue, and I welcome an attack on their monopoly.

nif2ee 7y ago
Brave is not even a browser, it is just a rebranded Chrome that advertises itself to users as a "browser" while its main publicity is nothing but an unhinged attack on the very same company that built the browser it's rebranding. On the other hand Firefox IS A browser and Mozilla is a non-profit.
- fredsanford 7y ago
  Nice revisionist history you got there... Chrome is just a rebranded KDE Konqueror if your logic holds.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    Brave didn't make any changes to the underlying engine. Chrome has, at this point, basically rewritten it.
    - vorticalbox 7y ago
      No but it made a lot of changes I terms of ad blocking and privacy.
- sys_64738 7y ago

throwGuardian 7y ago

Disclaimer: not associated with brave in any way. Facts: 1. Brave's tracking degree is little to none, compared to Google/Microsoft(edge). 2. Brave is the only browser that splits ad revenue with the user, and pays creators a higher percentage, compared to the AdSenses of the world. On top of that, brave ads aren't distracting, are generally of high quality and non intrusive to the browsing experience. I've personally earned more than $50 in aggregate this year using brave, and tipped a 100% of that to sites and content I consume often. Both the creators and I are happy costumers of brave.

saagarjha 7y ago
> On top of that, brave ads aren't distracting, are generally of high quality and non intrusive to the browsing experience. Native notifications are incredibly distracting and intrusive.
sheogorath 7y ago
The problem with brave is that it takes away creators freedom of choice when it comes to revenue for their content. It's nicely summed up in this article: https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html TL;DR: Creators have to sign-up to brave's BAT system in order to get revenue for ads that Brave embeds on the creator's website. And even then there is a competition upon creators for users to spend money on them which is not correclating with the time users spend on creator's content.
- pricci 7y ago
  The thing is that, in my experience, Brave does not embeds ads on the creator's page. It shows system alerts with the ads.
Proven 7y ago
sheogorath is right - Brave doesn't pay creators anything unless they enter a business relationship with them, but it nevertheless collects that revenue

saagarjha 7y ago

> Their home page (their website, not the browser's home page) contains analytics because they want to see what type of users are using their service, how many etc. Analytics are used virtually everywhere and are a nice way to gain information about how much traffic your website is recieving. Additionally, Brave's tracker blocker blocks this tracker anyway. Then why have it? Just because “everyone is doing it, so we should too, even though it’s antithetical to our goals”?

upofadown 7y ago

I am unable to use any Chrome/Chromium based browser due to one stupid and trivial characteristic. When you spawn a new session of Chrome/Chromium the resulting window/tab steals focus. That means that if you do so from some sort of terminal based program you are pointlessly left sitting there with the cursor still in the terminal window but with the focus on the browser window. If you were hoping to spawn more than one new browser session (say from a RSS reader), well, you are not doing that. Firefox has an obscure option that can be used to turn off this obnoxious behaviour. So I must use Firefox.

PhilippGille 7y ago
What OS are you using? At least on Windows there's a Win32 API to change window focus: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10898560/how-to-set-focus-to-another-window https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10898560/how-to-set-focu... On macOS maybe this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41309910/how-to-regain-set-focus-in-a-mac-os-swift-application https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41309910/how-to-regain-s...

Angeo34 7y ago

Anyone using Brave should be aware that Brave are known to use Bots on HN and on 4chan to spam pro Brave messages. If that isn't enough of an indicator how trustworthy their business is then I don't know. Currently there is not a singular reason to use Brave over Chrome. The only thing Brave does is bundle an adblocker and Brave is slightly easier to fingerprint than Chrome. There is no other difference. By default you will have less privacy with Brave than with Chrome due to fingerprinting.

samantohermes 7y ago
> The only thing Brave does is bundle an adblocker and Brave is slightly easier to fingerprint than Chrome. There is no other difference. Brave uses the same user agent of Chrome.
- Angeo34 7y ago
  So did I say anything about user agents? Why are people that desperate to defend Brave? I get there are lots of Brave bots but apparently there also are genuinely disillusioned users. Brave is way way way easier to fingerprint than Chrome. This alone makes it worse to use than Chrome without an adblocker at all.
  - samantohermes 7y ago
    Provide evidence. I don't even use Brave, I just wanted to demonstrate the hate against Brave coming from Firefox fanboys.
dang 7y ago
> known to use Bots on HN That breaks the site guideline against insinuating astroturfing, shillage, etc., without evidence. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... and don't do this here.

SimplePotato 7y ago

Any developers out there, using it day to day?

ironarm 7y ago
Yes, I am. It's been my primary browser for the last 14 months. It works the same as chrome for web development. I like the built in privacy features, but still use ublock, umatrix and privacy badger in conjunction with built in features. It's extremely snappy. I have some qualms about their BAT model, but I am opted into ads and have set wikipedia and several favorite sites to auto donate. I've also cashed out about half of it myself (about $30 of $60 this year). The ads themselves are crudely targeted. They claim the browser profiles your visits locally. Basically, visit opted in programming sites, get programming ads. It doesn't feel spooky and the ads are not intrusive. I would use this without the BAT model or crypto wallets, but use both of those features all the time but it's just a bonus. The most important thing to me is that it's chrome dev tools without Google. Chrome is straight up scary. * Also, native tor windows are handy for testing ;)

buboard 7y ago

Brave is the most disruptive thing to happen on the web in 15 years. The discussion about tracking is almost irrelevant - adblocking is the bait that brave uses which will take us from google's web to a web where every visitor can directly pay the creator to read anything on the web. It's almost comical to watch HN melting against brave because it's threatening the profits of their bosses. I personally hope the best for them and i 'll be doing my best to promote it.

dang 7y ago
> HN melting against brave because it's threatening the profits of their bosses That breaks the site guidelines. Please read and follow them, no matter how wrong you feel other commenters are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

onyva 7y ago

Basically every reasoning they give for why Brave is not as bad as it seems, seems to demonstrate exactly that point. Literally. Starting with “they clearly state in their privacy policy that their ads do not track you”. Great. Sure. Argument won decidedly.