15 ms·

Brave Browser and the Wayback Machine: Working Together

278 points by edward 7y ago

jvehent 7y ago
Mozilla did this a couple years ago. https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404s-graduation-report-22e65f62b2b1 https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404...
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Perhaps something a Brave Browser dev was involved in at Mozilla? Seems useful but probably is rightfully in plug-in territory IMO.
  - zitterbewegung 7y ago
    Not sure if you are being sarcastic but the Brave browser was made by Brendan Eich one of the cofounders of Mozilla .
    - mafm 7y ago
      Brendan Eich was also the guy who created javascript. (In 10 days, which probably explains a lot of the warts.)
      - techntoke 7y ago
        He also donated money to prop 8 to oppose gay marriage.
        dannyw 7y ago
        Hopefully this is one of the things that we stop bringing up in the future. This donation was made by him, in his personal capacity. We only know about it because of political donation disclosure laws and it was dug out 4 years later. There have been zero accusations or complaints that Brendan Eich harmed inclusivity as part of his job. It's a shame he was forced to step down, but we don't need to be bringing this up like it's a mark of shame on his part.
        herpderperator 7y ago
        I didn't know much about him and Googled him out of curiosity to read about his affiliation with Mozilla. It is rather eye-catching to see "Known for: JavaScript, opposition to same-sex marriage[1][2][3][4]" under his photo.[0] Seems very easy to "bring up" unwillingly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
        BrendanEich 7y ago
        Check the wiki history, there's an edit war ongoing.
        9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
        What does that have to do with the discussion?
  - 101404 7y ago
    The founder of Brave was one of the founders at Mozilla. Until her became a victim of cancel culture at Mozilla for having a "wrong opinion" 10 years or so ago. Sadly, Mozilla today is mostly a political organization that also publishes a web browser.
    - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
      Who would have thought companies don't like their CEO spending their earnings on repressing human rights.
      - 101404 7y ago
        Do you think you will further your "cause" by making things up?
    - teddyfrozevelt 7y ago
      Homophobia isn't an valid opinion that's up for debate.
      - 101404 7y ago
        That wasn't "homophobia". Do you really want to live in a world where this is the general style of discussion?
- jsjddbbwj 7y ago
  With a test pilot they cancelled seemingly. Brave has actually shipped it to all users today.
  - iggldiggl 7y ago
    The resulting extension is still alive and working fine, though: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new...
IAmEveryone 7y ago
This sounds like exactly the sort of feature that usually triggers an online Lynch mob when it's Mozilla doing it: It's not part of the core feature set people expect from a browser, and it seems eminently possible to do it in a plugin? I also find the self-acclaimed "Brave" browser company an odd partner to work with for an organisation dedicated to the open web like IA. This browser has exactly one purpose: to make money. In terms of the people working on it, it's arguably more commercial than Chrome, Safari, or Edge. The proposition "Brave" is making is: "Don't you also feel what this world needs is an intermediary between you and the people creating what you like, skimming from both sides whenever money is involved?"
- joshypants 7y ago
  Isn't there already an intermediary (advertising)?
- jayess 7y ago
  It’s the only browser on iOS that has decent ad blocking.
  - Cu3PO42 7y ago
    I disagree. I used to use Safari with Firefox Focus as a content filter and it worked perfectly fine for me. Other content blockers offer a ton of customization and should fit just about anyone.
- buboard 7y ago
  brave also makes it trivially easy to donate to IA (or any site for that matter)
  - MoronInAHurry 7y ago
    Let's say I want to donate $100 to IA. Here's how I do it now: 1. Go to https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/ in any browser, on any device. 2. Click "$100", click "Donate", enter credit card info. Now you write out the process for doing it via Brave. Assume the user just installed Brave and has 0 BAT.
8bitsrule 7y ago
This add-on for Firefox works well. Accessible from toolbar and (most-used options) from my context-menu. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machi...
ddevault 7y ago
Can we not work with the Brave browser? Technologists like us and archive.org should be boycotting it. Cryptocurrency nonsense, swapping ads with their own, soliciting donations for creators without their permission... Brave is a known bad actor in the browser market.
- gojomo 7y ago
  Huh? Brave is fast, open-source, & protects privacy as well or better than any other option. Brave's business-model experiments to support a tracker-free internet – like the crypto-tokens & user-agent-controlled ad-replacement – are opt-in. And further: who's better for users? Boycott Google & Microsoft, sure. But boycott tiny Brave? As Brave pushes the envelope on both privacy technology & privacy-respecting business models? That's a peculiarly self-defeating kind of righteousness.
  - craftyguy 7y ago
    > Brave's business-model experiments to support a tracker-free internet – like the crypto-tokens & user-agent-controlled ad-replacement – are opt-in. Shitcoins require public, and trackable, ledgers, so you literally cannot say 'uses shitcoin' and 'tracker-free internet' in the same sentence.
    - rezic 7y ago
      Was it really necessary to use the word "shitcoins"? I'm not the one to say whether your argument is otherwise correct, but resorting to such childish naming only ends up hurting your point. Chances are people just roll their eyes and scroll on to the next comment before they even finish the sentence.
      - craftyguy 7y ago
        > Was it really necessary to use the word "shitcoins"? Yes. > but resorting to such childish naming only ends up hurting your point. Well, I'm not wrong.
justlexi93 7y ago
The Web is fragile. The average life expectancy of a single Web page is anywhere from 44 – 100 days. We’ve all hit the dreaded error code 404 “Page Not Found”. As of today, Brave Browser users can heal many of those broken links with one click. Now this is interesting.
jshevek 7y ago
There is some valid criticism made of Brave in this thread, which seems to ignore that those additional features are opt-in. In my experience, Brave is the best browser for empowering the less technically literate to protect their privacy. Until Mozilla ships Firefox with more aggressive, integrated, on-by-default privacy protection, Brave is the best browser to advocate for non-techies.
- gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
  Yea the OS/free-software zealotry is annoying. I use Brave and it’s been great so far. Even the UI is nicer than Firefox imo.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    There may be zealotry involved in the attacks on Brave, but I don't think it is essentially OS/free software zealotry. Brave is open source, after all. Edit: I am a passionate advocate for freedom, privacy, and free software and I like Brave.
    - gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
      It feels to me like even a nice comment about Brave is an outright threat to openness and virtue. IMO it’s the same bizarre Manichaean zeitgeist that pops up in so many other aspects of life and discussion.
      - jshevek 7y ago
        Yes, I think we agree about the fact of an ideological bias, just not the underlying motive for, or nature of, the ideological bias.
- alwillis 7y ago
  Built-in Tor FTW.
- earenndil 7y ago
jshevek 7y ago
Which browser is best for respecting user privacy? """ We study six browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Brave Browser, Microsoft Edge and Yandex Browser. For Brave with its default settings we did not find any use of identifiers allowing tracking of IP address over time, and no sharing of the details of web pages visited with backend servers. Chrome, Firefox and Safari all share details of web pages visited with backend servers. For all three this happens via the search autocomplete feature, which sends web addresses to backend servers in realtime as they are typed. In addition, Firefox includes identifiers in its telemetry transmissions that can potentially be used to link these over time. Telemetry can be disabled, but again is silently enabled by default. Firefox also maintains an open websocket for push notifications that is linked to a unique identifier and so potentially can also be used for tracking and which cannot be easily disabled. Safari defaults to a poor choice of start page that leaks information to multiple third parties and allows them to set cookies without any user consent. Safari otherwise made no extraneous network connections and transmitted no persistent identifiers, but allied iCloud processes did make connections containing identifiers. From a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge and Yandex are qualitatively different from the other browsers studied. Both send persistent identifiers than can be used to link requests (and associated IP address/location) to back end servers. Edge also sends the hardware UUID of the device to Microsoft and Yandex similarly transmits a hashed hardware identifier to back end servers. As far as we can tell this behaviour cannot be disabled by users. In addition to the search autocomplete functionality that shares details of web pages visited, both transmit web page information to servers that appear unrelated to search autocomplete. """ From: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf (Paragraph breaks added for readability)
lhuser123 7y ago
Is Brave the only iOS browser with fingerprint protection? Does that really works?
katsura 7y ago
I used Brave for a couple of months, but in the end I had to switch, because it is just not ready to be used in everyday situations. I actually tried their crypto ads, out of curiosity. I had some BATs collected, then I reinstalled my machine, used their backup code to import the wallet again, but it showed zero value. I contacted them about this, never got an answer. The sync was causing a crash for some people, so they turned it off for everybody. It was off for at least a week, and maybe even now. But even when it was turned on, it didn't sync properly between my iPhone and my laptop. The browser frame is rendered weirdly both under xfce and kde. I had to resize the window and maximize again, to get the min/max/close buttons properly rendered, and make some random border disappear. There were sites where I couldn't log in even after turning off the shield. On my iPhone for some reason when I searched something in DDG, clicked on it, then went back, DDG was rendered, then tried to scroll, and the previous site started bleeding through from the bottom of the screen. The URL bar showed DDG, but nothing was clickable. Refreshing the page didn't work, so I had to force close the browser and open again to see my search query. Interestingly Google seemed to be working, although I only use it for like 1-2% of my search queries, so I cannot be sure. In the dev tools the audits tab didn't work at all. Couldn't connect an Android device for remote debugging. In the end all the little annoyances just made me uninstall it, because for me it is just too much to put up with all these. It definitely has some interesting ideas, but I cannot recommend it just yet.
- wilkystyle 7y ago
  I'm with you here. I really really want to use brave as my daily driver, but the biggest dealbreaker is buggy bookmark sync. I'm willing to forgive them making such a drastic and strange requirement like mandating that the all bookmarks folder be moved to the bookmarks toolbar, but when a basic feature like bookmarks syncing (a solved problem in every other browser) is so horrendously broken, I simply cannot use it.
- sjtindell 7y ago
  As a counterpoint to this I use Brave on my iPhone, Windows home PC and Mac work laptop. It blocks all ads, I don’t use the crypto at all and never have, and it works for 99% of the sites I visit including ones for various services around work. I never opted in or out of anything, it just works and because it blocks so much nonsense it’s fast. Frustrated by all that negativity when it works great for me as a “download and forget” drop in replacement for Chrome without all the Google tracking.
FillardMillmore 7y ago
Opinions are obviously split here among HNers about the merits of Brave and what it's actually trying to achieve. I can only speak for myself but I find that Brave as a daily driver is a wonderful browser. Since it's built on Chromium, it has all the common extensions I use with Chrome (Dark Reader, uBlock Origin, etc.). It has built-in Tor and a rich set of default privacy features. The ads it provides are opt-in and the way that it allows the user to choose which website/content creators to reward allows a level of freedom to users that other browsers typically don't. I don't know about the ethics behind everything Brave is doing - but this built in functionality of 404 redirects with the help of the IA/Wayback Machine is, to me, an interesting and welcome feature. I did not know, before reading this thread, that other browsers had plugins/extensions available for this. The fact that Brave is simply building it in natively seems to be a bold move. If other browsers adopt similar functionality natively, we'll know that it was a winning move. When all is said and done, despite any missteps Brave may be making, it is trying a different approach, and I think that in the end, whether or not Brave succeeds, that's healthy for a competitive browser ecosystem. Edit: One thing I'd really like to see for Brave's mobile browser in the future is the ability to use Chrome extensions - it seems completely strange to me that this hasn't been implemented yet (if I'm slow on the uptake and this capability has been added, please correct me)
- csteubs 7y ago
  I tend to agree. I run a QA team for an e-commerce startup and started using Brave for manual testing about a year ago. Chromium means the same dev tools I know and love, the extensions I use for debugging in Chrome work out of the box, Brave ads/BAT is all opt-in, and the the default "Shield" settings are great for sussing out analytics implementation issues. It seems like most of the arguments against Brave hinge on the token economy and the business model, which I really could not care any less about. Make your money, Brave. The Wayback machine feature is an interesting move, especially in the world of A/B tests and feature flags. I hope this bolsters support for IA initiatives and ends up powering some cool products, because I can think of a few ideas already (leaning heavily on competitive intelligence, inferring feature performance based on longevity/time-in-test, etc.)
  - 7y ago
mantap 7y ago
Not sure how I feel about this. A lot of people don't know about the wayback machine. This may incentivise people to send deletion requests to internet archive.
- kylebenzle 7y ago
  I think that is called "concern trolling" right?
brokensegue 7y ago
is Brave paying the Internet Archive as part of this deal? surely this will increase load on the wayback machine.
- markjgraham 7y ago
  No. No $ is changing hands. To be clear... we are super happy that Brave values helping to make the Web more useful and reliable. We welcome other browser companies joining them and working with us as well. The extra load on our servers is not that significant. At this point we support thousands of request per second, we can take on a few more. Having said that... we always appreciate the support and love from the community to people (and companies) who use and appreciate our services. We are adding more a billion URLs/day to the Wayback Machine these days... that is a LOT of hard drives :-)
  - ketamine__ 7y ago
    I tipped 10 BAT to the Wayback Machine today. I'm going to make it recurring.
kunglao 7y ago
What saddens me about the threads here is that it seems that some paint a very deliberate picture of Brave as a bad actor worse than other browser vendors. I was using Firefox and then I switched to Brave. None of their featyres/business model is shoved down my throat. I just use it to browse the Web, I do not see ads, I do not participate in their crypto currency program. Heck I don't even see their icon for crypto currency on my browser UI. I found Brave to be faster and more user friendly than Firefox which is why I switched. What I meant by user friendly is not just the UI components but also requires a minimal setup effort. I would like to hear more about technical and privacy related merits/demerits of Brave as I feel that's more pertinent at the moment when it comes to browser. However, the hate I hear about their business model/crypto currency somehow is baffling and ironically it seems to come from Firefox users. Can anyone point out some interesting technical and privacy related drawbacks of Brave? That'd be useful for a lot of us.
- Nursie 7y ago
  >> a very deliberate picture of Brave as a bad actor worse than other browser vendors. They have been at times. Particularly in the period during which they solicited funds to "help support" blogs and pages by people who had not signed up (and did not want to sign up when they found out about Brave and BAT). I'm not saying they're all bad, but they've overstepped the bounds of good behaviour at times.
  - steerablesafe 7y ago
    > Particularly in the period during which they solicited funds to "help support" blogs and pages by people who had not signed up IANAL but this sounds like straight up fraud, not just "overstepping the line a little bit".
    - Nursie 7y ago
      I agree, they seemed to be scraping author images from blogs, and putting messages up saying "You can support the site by sending a tip!" There's a screenshot here - https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/brave-tom-scott-donation-page-december-2018/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-br... Tom Scott was alerted to this when someone sent him a tweet asking if he'd got thte tip, and was annoyed because he had no intention of monetising anything. It does indeed look fraudulent to me. They have changed the behaviour now IIRC.
kristianp 7y ago
Surely the pages that go down quickly are less likely to be in the archive? That limits it's usefulness.
enitihas 7y ago
Brave is a wonderful browser on android, the best in my opinion. Ad blocking, plus one click javascript global blocking, and easy enabling for selected sites, make it a joy to use. Also, since it uses chromium, performance on android is way better than firefox. Android firefox is too slow.

278 points by edward 7y ago

Mozilla did this a couple years ago. https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404s-graduation-report-22e65f62b2b1 https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404...

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Perhaps something a Brave Browser dev was involved in at Mozilla? Seems useful but probably is rightfully in plug-in territory IMO.
- zitterbewegung 7y ago
  Not sure if you are being sarcastic but the Brave browser was made by Brendan Eich one of the cofounders of Mozilla .
  - mafm 7y ago
    Brendan Eich was also the guy who created javascript. (In 10 days, which probably explains a lot of the warts.)
    - techntoke 7y ago
      He also donated money to prop 8 to oppose gay marriage.
      - dannyw 7y ago
        Hopefully this is one of the things that we stop bringing up in the future. This donation was made by him, in his personal capacity. We only know about it because of political donation disclosure laws and it was dug out 4 years later. There have been zero accusations or complaints that Brendan Eich harmed inclusivity as part of his job. It's a shame he was forced to step down, but we don't need to be bringing this up like it's a mark of shame on his part.
        herpderperator 7y ago
        I didn't know much about him and Googled him out of curiosity to read about his affiliation with Mozilla. It is rather eye-catching to see "Known for: JavaScript, opposition to same-sex marriage[1][2][3][4]" under his photo.[0] Seems very easy to "bring up" unwillingly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
        BrendanEich 7y ago
        Check the wiki history, there's an edit war ongoing.
      - 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
        What does that have to do with the discussion?
- 101404 7y ago
  The founder of Brave was one of the founders at Mozilla. Until her became a victim of cancel culture at Mozilla for having a "wrong opinion" 10 years or so ago. Sadly, Mozilla today is mostly a political organization that also publishes a web browser.
  - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
    Who would have thought companies don't like their CEO spending their earnings on repressing human rights.
    - 101404 7y ago
      Do you think you will further your "cause" by making things up?
  - teddyfrozevelt 7y ago
    Homophobia isn't an valid opinion that's up for debate.
    - 101404 7y ago
      That wasn't "homophobia". Do you really want to live in a world where this is the general style of discussion?
jsjddbbwj 7y ago
With a test pilot they cancelled seemingly. Brave has actually shipped it to all users today.
- iggldiggl 7y ago
  The resulting extension is still alive and working fine, though: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new...

IAmEveryone 7y ago

This sounds like exactly the sort of feature that usually triggers an online Lynch mob when it's Mozilla doing it: It's not part of the core feature set people expect from a browser, and it seems eminently possible to do it in a plugin? I also find the self-acclaimed "Brave" browser company an odd partner to work with for an organisation dedicated to the open web like IA. This browser has exactly one purpose: to make money. In terms of the people working on it, it's arguably more commercial than Chrome, Safari, or Edge. The proposition "Brave" is making is: "Don't you also feel what this world needs is an intermediary between you and the people creating what you like, skimming from both sides whenever money is involved?"

joshypants 7y ago
Isn't there already an intermediary (advertising)?
jayess 7y ago
It’s the only browser on iOS that has decent ad blocking.
- Cu3PO42 7y ago
  I disagree. I used to use Safari with Firefox Focus as a content filter and it worked perfectly fine for me. Other content blockers offer a ton of customization and should fit just about anyone.
buboard 7y ago
brave also makes it trivially easy to donate to IA (or any site for that matter)
- MoronInAHurry 7y ago
  Let's say I want to donate $100 to IA. Here's how I do it now: 1. Go to https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/ in any browser, on any device. 2. Click "$100", click "Donate", enter credit card info. Now you write out the process for doing it via Brave. Assume the user just installed Brave and has 0 BAT.

8bitsrule 7y ago

This add-on for Firefox works well. Accessible from toolbar and (most-used options) from my context-menu. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machi...

ddevault 7y ago

Can we not work with the Brave browser? Technologists like us and archive.org should be boycotting it. Cryptocurrency nonsense, swapping ads with their own, soliciting donations for creators without their permission... Brave is a known bad actor in the browser market.

gojomo 7y ago
Huh? Brave is fast, open-source, & protects privacy as well or better than any other option. Brave's business-model experiments to support a tracker-free internet – like the crypto-tokens & user-agent-controlled ad-replacement – are opt-in. And further: who's better for users? Boycott Google & Microsoft, sure. But boycott tiny Brave? As Brave pushes the envelope on both privacy technology & privacy-respecting business models? That's a peculiarly self-defeating kind of righteousness.
- craftyguy 7y ago
  > Brave's business-model experiments to support a tracker-free internet – like the crypto-tokens & user-agent-controlled ad-replacement – are opt-in. Shitcoins require public, and trackable, ledgers, so you literally cannot say 'uses shitcoin' and 'tracker-free internet' in the same sentence.
  - rezic 7y ago
    Was it really necessary to use the word "shitcoins"? I'm not the one to say whether your argument is otherwise correct, but resorting to such childish naming only ends up hurting your point. Chances are people just roll their eyes and scroll on to the next comment before they even finish the sentence.
    - craftyguy 7y ago
      > Was it really necessary to use the word "shitcoins"? Yes. > but resorting to such childish naming only ends up hurting your point. Well, I'm not wrong.

justlexi93 7y ago

The Web is fragile. The average life expectancy of a single Web page is anywhere from 44 – 100 days. We’ve all hit the dreaded error code 404 “Page Not Found”. As of today, Brave Browser users can heal many of those broken links with one click. Now this is interesting.

jshevek 7y ago

There is some valid criticism made of Brave in this thread, which seems to ignore that those additional features are opt-in. In my experience, Brave is the best browser for empowering the less technically literate to protect their privacy. Until Mozilla ships Firefox with more aggressive, integrated, on-by-default privacy protection, Brave is the best browser to advocate for non-techies.

gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
Yea the OS/free-software zealotry is annoying. I use Brave and it’s been great so far. Even the UI is nicer than Firefox imo.
- jshevek 7y ago
  There may be zealotry involved in the attacks on Brave, but I don't think it is essentially OS/free software zealotry. Brave is open source, after all. Edit: I am a passionate advocate for freedom, privacy, and free software and I like Brave.
  - gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
    It feels to me like even a nice comment about Brave is an outright threat to openness and virtue. IMO it’s the same bizarre Manichaean zeitgeist that pops up in so many other aspects of life and discussion.
    - jshevek 7y ago
      Yes, I think we agree about the fact of an ideological bias, just not the underlying motive for, or nature of, the ideological bias.
alwillis 7y ago
Built-in Tor FTW.
earenndil 7y ago

jshevek 7y ago

Which browser is best for respecting user privacy? """ We study six browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Brave Browser, Microsoft Edge and Yandex Browser. For Brave with its default settings we did not find any use of identifiers allowing tracking of IP address over time, and no sharing of the details of web pages visited with backend servers. Chrome, Firefox and Safari all share details of web pages visited with backend servers. For all three this happens via the search autocomplete feature, which sends web addresses to backend servers in realtime as they are typed. In addition, Firefox includes identifiers in its telemetry transmissions that can potentially be used to link these over time. Telemetry can be disabled, but again is silently enabled by default. Firefox also maintains an open websocket for push notifications that is linked to a unique identifier and so potentially can also be used for tracking and which cannot be easily disabled. Safari defaults to a poor choice of start page that leaks information to multiple third parties and allows them to set cookies without any user consent. Safari otherwise made no extraneous network connections and transmitted no persistent identifiers, but allied iCloud processes did make connections containing identifiers. From a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge and Yandex are qualitatively different from the other browsers studied. Both send persistent identifiers than can be used to link requests (and associated IP address/location) to back end servers. Edge also sends the hardware UUID of the device to Microsoft and Yandex similarly transmits a hashed hardware identifier to back end servers. As far as we can tell this behaviour cannot be disabled by users. In addition to the search autocomplete functionality that shares details of web pages visited, both transmit web page information to servers that appear unrelated to search autocomplete. """ From: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf (Paragraph breaks added for readability)

lhuser123 7y ago

Is Brave the only iOS browser with fingerprint protection? Does that really works?

katsura 7y ago

I used Brave for a couple of months, but in the end I had to switch, because it is just not ready to be used in everyday situations. I actually tried their crypto ads, out of curiosity. I had some BATs collected, then I reinstalled my machine, used their backup code to import the wallet again, but it showed zero value. I contacted them about this, never got an answer. The sync was causing a crash for some people, so they turned it off for everybody. It was off for at least a week, and maybe even now. But even when it was turned on, it didn't sync properly between my iPhone and my laptop. The browser frame is rendered weirdly both under xfce and kde. I had to resize the window and maximize again, to get the min/max/close buttons properly rendered, and make some random border disappear. There were sites where I couldn't log in even after turning off the shield. On my iPhone for some reason when I searched something in DDG, clicked on it, then went back, DDG was rendered, then tried to scroll, and the previous site started bleeding through from the bottom of the screen. The URL bar showed DDG, but nothing was clickable. Refreshing the page didn't work, so I had to force close the browser and open again to see my search query. Interestingly Google seemed to be working, although I only use it for like 1-2% of my search queries, so I cannot be sure. In the dev tools the audits tab didn't work at all. Couldn't connect an Android device for remote debugging. In the end all the little annoyances just made me uninstall it, because for me it is just too much to put up with all these. It definitely has some interesting ideas, but I cannot recommend it just yet.

wilkystyle 7y ago
I'm with you here. I really really want to use brave as my daily driver, but the biggest dealbreaker is buggy bookmark sync. I'm willing to forgive them making such a drastic and strange requirement like mandating that the all bookmarks folder be moved to the bookmarks toolbar, but when a basic feature like bookmarks syncing (a solved problem in every other browser) is so horrendously broken, I simply cannot use it.
sjtindell 7y ago
As a counterpoint to this I use Brave on my iPhone, Windows home PC and Mac work laptop. It blocks all ads, I don’t use the crypto at all and never have, and it works for 99% of the sites I visit including ones for various services around work. I never opted in or out of anything, it just works and because it blocks so much nonsense it’s fast. Frustrated by all that negativity when it works great for me as a “download and forget” drop in replacement for Chrome without all the Google tracking.

FillardMillmore 7y ago

Opinions are obviously split here among HNers about the merits of Brave and what it's actually trying to achieve. I can only speak for myself but I find that Brave as a daily driver is a wonderful browser. Since it's built on Chromium, it has all the common extensions I use with Chrome (Dark Reader, uBlock Origin, etc.). It has built-in Tor and a rich set of default privacy features. The ads it provides are opt-in and the way that it allows the user to choose which website/content creators to reward allows a level of freedom to users that other browsers typically don't. I don't know about the ethics behind everything Brave is doing - but this built in functionality of 404 redirects with the help of the IA/Wayback Machine is, to me, an interesting and welcome feature. I did not know, before reading this thread, that other browsers had plugins/extensions available for this. The fact that Brave is simply building it in natively seems to be a bold move. If other browsers adopt similar functionality natively, we'll know that it was a winning move. When all is said and done, despite any missteps Brave may be making, it is trying a different approach, and I think that in the end, whether or not Brave succeeds, that's healthy for a competitive browser ecosystem. Edit: One thing I'd really like to see for Brave's mobile browser in the future is the ability to use Chrome extensions - it seems completely strange to me that this hasn't been implemented yet (if I'm slow on the uptake and this capability has been added, please correct me)

csteubs 7y ago
I tend to agree. I run a QA team for an e-commerce startup and started using Brave for manual testing about a year ago. Chromium means the same dev tools I know and love, the extensions I use for debugging in Chrome work out of the box, Brave ads/BAT is all opt-in, and the the default "Shield" settings are great for sussing out analytics implementation issues. It seems like most of the arguments against Brave hinge on the token economy and the business model, which I really could not care any less about. Make your money, Brave. The Wayback machine feature is an interesting move, especially in the world of A/B tests and feature flags. I hope this bolsters support for IA initiatives and ends up powering some cool products, because I can think of a few ideas already (leaning heavily on competitive intelligence, inferring feature performance based on longevity/time-in-test, etc.)
- 7y ago

mantap 7y ago

Not sure how I feel about this. A lot of people don't know about the wayback machine. This may incentivise people to send deletion requests to internet archive.

kylebenzle 7y ago
I think that is called "concern trolling" right?

brokensegue 7y ago

is Brave paying the Internet Archive as part of this deal? surely this will increase load on the wayback machine.

markjgraham 7y ago
No. No $ is changing hands. To be clear... we are super happy that Brave values helping to make the Web more useful and reliable. We welcome other browser companies joining them and working with us as well. The extra load on our servers is not that significant. At this point we support thousands of request per second, we can take on a few more. Having said that... we always appreciate the support and love from the community to people (and companies) who use and appreciate our services. We are adding more a billion URLs/day to the Wayback Machine these days... that is a LOT of hard drives :-)
- ketamine__ 7y ago
  I tipped 10 BAT to the Wayback Machine today. I'm going to make it recurring.

kunglao 7y ago

What saddens me about the threads here is that it seems that some paint a very deliberate picture of Brave as a bad actor worse than other browser vendors. I was using Firefox and then I switched to Brave. None of their featyres/business model is shoved down my throat. I just use it to browse the Web, I do not see ads, I do not participate in their crypto currency program. Heck I don't even see their icon for crypto currency on my browser UI. I found Brave to be faster and more user friendly than Firefox which is why I switched. What I meant by user friendly is not just the UI components but also requires a minimal setup effort. I would like to hear more about technical and privacy related merits/demerits of Brave as I feel that's more pertinent at the moment when it comes to browser. However, the hate I hear about their business model/crypto currency somehow is baffling and ironically it seems to come from Firefox users. Can anyone point out some interesting technical and privacy related drawbacks of Brave? That'd be useful for a lot of us.

Nursie 7y ago
>> a very deliberate picture of Brave as a bad actor worse than other browser vendors. They have been at times. Particularly in the period during which they solicited funds to "help support" blogs and pages by people who had not signed up (and did not want to sign up when they found out about Brave and BAT). I'm not saying they're all bad, but they've overstepped the bounds of good behaviour at times.
- steerablesafe 7y ago
  > Particularly in the period during which they solicited funds to "help support" blogs and pages by people who had not signed up IANAL but this sounds like straight up fraud, not just "overstepping the line a little bit".
  - Nursie 7y ago
    I agree, they seemed to be scraping author images from blogs, and putting messages up saying "You can support the site by sending a tip!" There's a screenshot here - https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/brave-tom-scott-donation-page-december-2018/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-br... Tom Scott was alerted to this when someone sent him a tweet asking if he'd got thte tip, and was annoyed because he had no intention of monetising anything. It does indeed look fraudulent to me. They have changed the behaviour now IIRC.

kristianp 7y ago

Surely the pages that go down quickly are less likely to be in the archive? That limits it's usefulness.

enitihas 7y ago

Brave is a wonderful browser on android, the best in my opinion. Ad blocking, plus one click javascript global blocking, and easy enabling for selected sites, make it a joy to use. Also, since it uses chromium, performance on android is way better than firefox. Android firefox is too slow.