23 ms·

Brave Browser Passes 20M Monthly Active Users and 7M Daily Active Users

433 points by 0xedb 6y ago

pkulak 6y ago
Use Firefox, people. Brave is shady as hell. I'll use Chrome or Edge long before I use Brave.
- lenitabinol 6y ago
  please elaborate
- amitport 6y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - coolspot 6y ago
    Probably reference to all crypto-coin related stuff in Brave.
    - agumonkey 6y ago
      Even without the crypto stuff, when I installed it, it felt like an intern first eclipse plugin. Few buttons more, a different help page and that's it. Didn't inspire technical strength and quality.
      - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
        That's weird, it's pretty indistinguishable from the other browsers for me. Reminds me of a cross between Opera and Firefox. It's run by one of the principle Firefox devs (Eich) and none of the stories about it ripping people off or being insecure appear to have been well founded. I've used all the major browsers, starting with Mosaic and Netscape, was there when FF was phoenix, have been writing websites for 20 years (only a small amount of that time commercially). YMMV but it seems trustworthy, privacy focused, fast enough (ie I can't tell if it's different in performance terms). It's just reskinned Chrome with privacy extensions built in and a system to enable people to try and send micropayments to sites if the sites are signed up. It's not reminiscent of Eclipse in anyway for me (mind Eclipse to me most evokes poor DE integration, I'm a long time KDE user, and having a billion settings). Use the browser that pleases you most though.
        agumonkey 6y ago
        Yes it felt like a reskinned Chrome with a few unfinished parts bolted on. And coming from Eich big new project I thought it would be way more polished.
        BrendanEich 6y ago
        When did you try it?
        hackerfromthefu 6y ago
        Yeah I wonder if most of the Brave allegations (that are usually attached to no actual verifiable facts) are in fact hit pieces on Eich from the bully crowd
  - jolmg 6y ago
    > Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
  - fuu_dev 6y ago
    Have fun: https://rudism.com/the-brave-browser-is-brilliant/ https://rudism.com/the-brave-browser-is-brilliant/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027
  - pkulak 6y ago
    Replacing ads on sites you visit with their ads, wrapped up in a cryptocurrency scheme, like you'd expect from a literal virus, brought to you by a guy too homophobic to be on Mozilla's board. Plus, and I have no evidence of this apart the synchronized hype they do for the browser, but I'm pretty sure Brave is secretly bankrolling those very... political... Linux YouTubers.
    - ColanR 6y ago
      > too homophobic to be on Mozilla's board I do enjoy the irony that Mozilla seems to have gone downhill ever since he left / got kicked out. The people replacing him, IIRC, aren't as knowledgeable or expert as he was. But then, I am somewhat a fan of pure meritocracy.
      - BrendanEich 6y ago
        Thanks for your comment. Of course (to reply to downvoted up-comment), we don't and never did "[replace] ads on sites you visit". But when it comes to evil-me, making false claims is justified? Seems so!
- satysin 6y ago
  Do you have anything to back that up? I ask because I feel the same but don't actually have any proof that things are shady. It is just a feeling which obviously isn't enough to convince others but is enough to put me off using it the few times I've tried. Something about all this 'rewards' stuff just feels dodgy. No idea why I feel this, I probably read something at some point but don't recall now.
  - sam0x17 6y ago
    I've used it for over a year and yeah it's nothing more than a feeling -- experience has just been better than anything else in terms of the default ad blocking. "Disable your ad-blocker" things also leave you alone because they know if you are using Brave you aren't going to budge.
    - Qub3d 6y ago
      That's not how anti-adblocker banners work, generally. Brave is likely just using the anti-anti-adblocker lists, which uBlock and many others now use, as well. [0]: https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-annoyance.txt?a=0 https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-annoyance.txt?a=0 [1]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_14_Annoyances/filter.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistr...
  - redvenom 6y ago
    Brave by default collects telemetry data. It is anonymized but any security researcher will tell you that metadata of this nature over time can be more revealing that is claimed. It's right their in their FAQ. Brave's primary customers are advertisers. While this is not evidence in itself, it is certainly something to be wary of.
    - dsissitka 6y ago
      > It's right their in their FAQ. Which FAQ? This appears to be the only FAQ that mentions anonymized data: > Will Brave sell user data to advertisers? > > We do not have access to identifiable user data. The anonymized aggregated ad campaign related data we do collect is used for accounting and reporting, but this data cannot be mapped back to devices or user identities of any kind. Learn more If you follow the "Learn more" link it says: > If you switch on Brave Rewards and switch on ads (in Rewards settings) you will see ad notifications, and will receive BAT to reward you for viewing these ads. It seems like it's off by default?
- 24t 6y ago
  Microsoft and Google are proven bad actors. I'm not much of a believer in 'the devil you know'.
- wnevets 6y ago
  I rather have google track me than infest my machine with cryptominers.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    That's not how Brave works.
    - Dahoon 6y ago
      If it walks like a duck... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
      - admax88q 6y ago
        Still not a cryptominer.
      - Karunamon 6y ago
        "Mining" in the context of crypto has a very specific definition, and Brave doesn't even come close. Mining involves using your computing resources to complete calculations that ensure the security of the blockchain, resulting in a cryptocurrency payout. A company taking money on your behalf without notification, while slimy, isn't mining.
- ReptileMan 6y ago
  Great - tell me how to make mouse gestures work on ALL pages - that include new tab page/speed dial and firefox internal and I am sold. Unfortunately I don't think that anything short of messing with the code and rebuilding makes it possible.
  - atraac 6y ago
    Yup, I use touchpad a lot and lack of proper gesture support on precision touchpads on Windows makes it unusable to me. To this day all bugs regarding this are open and only chromium based browsers support it nicely.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- wussboy 6y ago
  The important thing is that we punish companies that are actively trying to fix the problems we all care about because they didn’t fix them perfectly the first time or in exactly the way we would prefer. Sometimes the users on this site sound like they are drowning, but when you throw them a like jacket, they push it away as they complain about the colour.
  - mustuhfa 6y ago
    No, we punish them when they have fraudulent practices and when the product is a scam, like brave is. They modify user's input without their consent, they accept money with no guarantee of delivering to the intended target and talk about privacy as a selling point when they run an ad network . I cannot believe how much people turn in to a cult like fanboy for a product they understand very little about.
    - BrendanEich 6y ago
      We fixed the bug where refcodes were added to binance.us and binance.com URLs. That was a blunder, but not a scam. We made no money from it. As for "modify user's input without their consent", go type keywords into any browser, Firefox Safari Chrome Edge etc. You'll see search affiliate client code, same as we had by mistake for the two binance domains, and only as suggestions for other partners (all of this, we removed in the springtime, to quell concerns and misrepresentations such as you make here). We do not "accept money" as intermediary, the browser holds the tips to unverified creators. You seem to be operating on misinformation here. In December 2018 we briefly shipped a system that sent our own funds when directed, back to us, on behalf of unverified creators. That too was a mistake, but we fix bugs and so such tips are now buffered client-side. In any case, we were the source of funds there, not the user. We've taken great pains with Brave Ads (not an "ad network" by the way) to avoid any privacy problems, starting by making them opt-in, using in-browser-only data matched against a fixed-per-population-per-day catalog, confirmed via Privacy Pass (blind signature cryptographi). This is the wave of the future, even Google is trying to do a Privacy Sandbox now, but they are piling up risks and letting partners into the sandbox last I looked. It's clear you have some underlying problem with us, but it isn't based on the facts. What's the story?
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > Use Firefox, people. Brave is shady as hell. I'll use Chrome or Edge long before I use Brave. Firefox feeds itself in the hand of Google. They won't do anything that will make Google less dominant.
  - voidpointercast 6y ago
    And brave doesn’t even attempt that. They perpetuate the Google monopoly and bolt on their own monetization schema as a ‘feature’ toward the user.
chaBha 6y ago
I recently moved away from datahogger chrome. Google is throwing me captcha every single time I use Brave browser, but same thing does not happen when using Safari browser. Why is that?
- coolspot 6y ago
  User agent string, among orhers, affects how often you get captcha. For example Tor Browser with default user agent gets all the captchas, many rounds per. Same Tor Browser with manually overriden normal Firefox UA barely gets any captchas.
  - axaxs 6y ago
    Brave uses Chrome's user agent string.
  - ffpip 6y ago
    Tor Browser uses Firefox UA. Brave browser uses Chrome's UA.
    - coolspot 6y ago
      Tor Browser uses one particular Firefox UA, which is very much a give away that you are using Tor Browser.
      - ffpip 6y ago
        Tor browser uses the most popular Firefox UA, used by the extended stable version of Firefox, and used by the thousands of people who turn on privacy.resist.fingerprinting.
- pgm8705 6y ago
  I'm guessing 3rd party cookie blocking being on by default.
  - tinodotim 6y ago
satysin 6y ago
The one feature I wish any other browser would do as well as Chrome is on-the-fly translation. I think Microsoft Edge does this using Bing Translate but I guess as none of the other browser makers have a translation service they can use they instead rely on a wonky extension that uses Google Translate which isn't anywhere near as smooth as the built-in translate in Chrome (naturally). If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them as it is the only thing keeping me on Chrome these days.
- sam0x17 6y ago
  Because Brave is chromium-based I believe you can actually use that exact feature in Brave if you install the Google Translate extension.
  - satysin 6y ago
    Not my experience a few weeks ago when I last tried. It prompts you to install a Google Translate extension that basically just sends the URL to Google's web translate service rather than translate 'in place' like Chrome does.
    - jonathansampson 6y ago
      Google charges (quite a bit) for the translation service. Unfortunately, at this time Brave is only able to offer the Google Translate extension (which we agree isn't as nice).
- ColanR 6y ago
  I imagine that google can do on-the-fly translation because they can eat the cost of the servers running the translation. Best I've seen for firefox uses deepl, which I've heard (on HN) is better than google translate. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/to-deepl/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/to-deepl/
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    https://Deepl.com/translator https://Deepl.com/translator is really good IME. It provides more fluid translations and some better, more precise use of terms for me when translating technical documents (mechanical engineering) from French/German.
bmarquez 6y ago
Brave recently became my default browser, but I personally don't care for the crypto stuff. The current iOS beta allows users to sync their bookmarks with Windows and iOS privately, and it's what convinced me to switch. I didn't need to create an account with my email address, or install iCloud...just scan a QR code. I wish they'd fix the captcha problem though, a lot of sites that use ReCaptcha think Brave browser users are bots (due to the security).
- colordrops 6y ago
  I appreciate that you can turn off all of their additional features pretty easily.
- bsclifton 6y ago
  Fix for the CAPTCHA issue coming! There's a pre-release version out which you can try: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71 Shooting to have the official version out today or tomorrow
  - ffpip 6y ago
    Hello! The android browser has another captcha issue for a long time. The captcha is partially rendered outside the screen. I tested this on multiples devices. On Brave Nightly since 6 months. block ads, Fingerprinting - aggressive , 3rd party cookies blocked,
  - bsclifton 6y ago
    CAPTCHA fix released just a few mins ago! :)
KMnO4 6y ago
Interesting that a browser designed to block analytics has built in analytics. Is this enabled by default?
- renewiltord 6y ago
  I was curious too and so I looked it up. I believe it's opt-out https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ Here's a list of the telemetry https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/P3A https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/P3A
- fastball 6y ago
  Pretty sure the goal is to block 3rd party ads and tracking scripts. The goal was never "block all analytics". For example, I don't think Brave will by default block 1st party analytics either.
  - d0gbread 6y ago
    Brave blocks Google Tag Manager completely and that doesn't drop any cookies at all, and Google Analytics which drops first party cookies.
sam0x17 6y ago
The opt-in ads are a bunch of shady crypto-currency things, but I love it. I've actually been making like ~$5/month from ads consistently for almost a year now.
- sjtindell 6y ago
  Can you elaborate a bit? I'm obviously interested. I just turn on Ads normally?
  - topspin 6y ago
    Here it is in a nutshell: By default (you can turn this behavior off if you wish,) Brave will periodically (every 120 minutes or so) popup an ad. The ad doesn't appear 'in the browser window.' On Windows 10, for instance, it pops up in desktop Notifications. The ad is a sentence of text and a button, full stop. No video, audio, animations, or anything creepy. Just a little dialog box you can click or dismiss. Every time that happens you receive BAT, a cryptocurrency, that accumulates in your automatically created BAT account. You do with it what you will but, by default, it is periodically distributed to sites that opt-in to accepting BAT.
    - SwiftyBug 6y ago
      Thus lifting the necessity from websites to display ads in them.
    - ffpip 6y ago
      > By default (you can turn this behavior off if you wish,) It's opt in. Not default
    - sam0x17 6y ago
      You have to "activate" the notification to open the resulting page, or you don't get paid. But it's a quick click and close. Honestly once or twice I've actually looked at the site a bit.
- topspin 6y ago
yabones 6y ago
Brave is interesting because its users fall for the 'VPN' fallacy. Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever. Or - with browsers - rather than install and configure Firefox to disable the (very limited) telemetry and configure ad blockers etc, you install a chromium derivative with all the Google pieces replaced with a different flavour of mystery sauce. You're still having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with far less scrutiny than Google.
- varispeed 6y ago
  Is Google actually under any scrutiny? I get an impression that they can pay their way out of anything or get a slap on the wrist. I agree though that you cannot check if the VPN provider logs your traffic or not even if they claim they don't log it.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    Did Microsoft pay its way out of antitrust back around 2000? The thing with being protected through paying off politicians is that it works, until it doesn’t.
    - varispeed 6y ago
      They did settle, but it is worth noting that Microsoft is not Google. I consider Google to be much higher on the ladder of evil.
      - Craighead 6y ago
        Subjective statements are just that
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      Yes.
- 6y ago
kylehotchkiss 6y ago
If you work on brave and are reading this... can you stop showing random Crypto banners over nytimes.com and the like? It's very tacky
- PretzelPirate 6y ago
  I don’t get any crypto banners when I go to nytimes.com in Brave.
  - fullstop 6y ago
    I think that this is what they were referring to: https://i.imgur.com/oaZtmen.png https://i.imgur.com/oaZtmen.png I'm not sure why it shows up for nytimes.com, though, and not other sites.
    - jonathansampson 6y ago
      Some times perform a bit of reflection, and scan over global objects in the document window. This can sometimes trigger our dApp-detection logic. The experience should be better in Brave Beta, and in the future we hope to get rid of the problem entirely by removing the current injection-based detection.
      - ffpip 6y ago
        This happens on archive.org, nytimes.com and some smaller sites too. I've turned off all crypto, but this appears on every reload of the site. Can I know if there is a setting to toggle or is this a bug?
- bsclifton 6y ago
  That's part of "Web3" (aka Dapps) and you can turn it off. Under brave://settings/extensions for `Ethereum provider for using Dapps` pick `None`
  - kylehotchkiss 6y ago
mdre 6y ago
Can someone enlighten me on why does literally everyone use Chromium as the engine for their browser? Why does Firefox not have anything comparable to Chromium/Node/Electron? Is Chrome's JS engine that superior or what?
- taftster 6y ago
  I don't have a real answer for you, more just shades of understanding. I believe it's the case that Chromium is just more extensible and designed for reuse. Whereas Firefox is more monolithic and less able to be extended. I don't think it has anything to do with the javascript engine per se, but more the general API surface that Chromium gives you. There might be some additional benefit that Chrome is the most used browser (currently) and so there might be some developer sentiment or familiarity with it; Chrome's popularity might push adoption for Chromium.
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    I don't understand why Mozilla itself doesn't support an Electron clone.
    - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
      Because the people calling the shots don't understand the "market". They've been coasting on their (predecessors') early success for years. Their numbers with respect to audience size is dependent on the same factors that OpenOffice depends on: people with a faint awareness of what the project is / once was but no real exposure to the ins and outs of what has changed about the projects in the last several years.
    - Guidii 6y ago
      Short answer is that the amount of time and energy to create and maintain it wouldn't be justified by the expected gain. I'm not even sure what moz would gain here.
      - jay_kyburz 6y ago
atty 6y ago
I don’t think I’m alone as a Brave user when I say that the crypto stuff and some of their default settings aren’t the greatest, but overall still provides a compelling solution to multiple problems. So while it’s not a perfect product, and the crypto stuff still weirds me out, I find it to be the best option for my personal use case. I get chromium and it’s large library of extensions, as well as having it be decoupled from Google, and some decent Adblock and tracker blocking built in. On the downside, because of the crypto stuff, I feel like I need to double check the news a few times a year to make sure they haven’t made it mandatory, or done anything shady. Overall I’m happy with Brave, and glad to see it growing.
andirk 6y ago
- Uses far less phone battery. - Blocks abuses of web technology, mainly advertising tricks. - Almost identical to Chrome now but not part of the Google monolith. - Use Tor w/ 1 click. Disclosure: I'm invested in $BAT, the browser's native token
- fastball 6y ago
  Interesting that you don't mention the BAT / pay for attention part of the equation, except as it relates to your own investment.
dshep 6y ago
I've been using Brave most of this year and really like it. The killer feature for me is that it lets you disable scripts for individual websites or 'Allow scripts once'. This basically makes most paywall news sites readable.
- fsflover 6y ago
  This is exactly what Noscript extension on Firefox does since forever.
  - jonathansampson 6y ago
    Much of what Brave does out of the box can be achieved with an array of extensions which have existed for some time. One major appeal of Brave is that these features are built-in, on-by-default, and have no reliance upon Google to not break them moving forward (see Manifest v3 and uBlock Origin, and/or MetaMask being temporarily removed from Google's Web and Play Stores). With Brave, the type of privacy and control users expect is baked-in, and easy to use. Download, Run, and Done. The way it ought to be in 2020
  - dshep 6y ago
    Noscript is incredibly fussy and hard to use. Also it does not have the 'allow scripts [to run] once' ability afaict.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      Works smooth for me. This option exists too, it’s called “allow temporarily”.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  I love this feature also. I just wish that when I disable scripts for a website, it would still let my browser plugins that inject JS work. On Firefox, whatever browser plugin I use to block scripts does this out of the box. It makes more sense to do it this way, since I’m not saying “don’t run scripts on pages of this domain”, I’m saying “don’t run scripts originating from pages on this domain”.
quaffapint 6y ago
Recommend Vivaldi (https://vivaldi.com https://vivaldi.com) as an alternative to Brave. Same Chromium based browser, but without any of the crypto stuff and has a lot of nice built-in features. Works on PC/Mac/Linux/Phone.
- chrisjarvis 6y ago
  +1 Vivaldi is a beautifully designed product in my experience. I haven't used on mobile tho.
- eznzt 6y ago
  The UI needs a lot of polish. Other than that, good.
  - singhkays 6y ago
    I'm confused. UI is one of the things Vivaldi differentiates itself on. What's the polish that they could add?
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  Vivaldi is a browser that feels like "it's almost there" to me. Opera feels like a fully fleshed out and different browser whereas vivaldi feels like "hey weve got a massive backlog of stuff that doesn't even compare to the competition yet." My favorite lightweight browser though is fallon. It's like IE but not as bad.
pachico 6y ago
I use Brave but mostly because it's fast and blocks lots of ads.
mapgrep 6y ago
Brave is the only browser on iOS that lets me turn off javascript on a per-site basis. VERY useful. (If you're aware of others, I'm all ears.)
- tristan957 6y ago
  Firefox + uBlock Origin
  - scpedicini 6y ago
    He said iOS, Firefox on iOS doesn't support addons unfortunately
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kqvamxurcagg 6y ago
Been using Brave as my main browser for several months now. It's great.
Dahoon 6y ago
>"Malware Passes 20M Monthly Active Users and 7M Daily Active Users"
k__ 6y ago
I switched from Chrome to Firefox two years ago. But last week I swiched to Brave, because Firefox simply couldn't deliver the performance I need for all the heavy weight web apps I use (Cloud9, VSCode, Gravit Designer, Slack, Asana). Brave is overall pretty snappy and I only got problems with Recaptcha, which wants me to do a ridiculous amount of tests.
- tinodotim 6y ago
  > Brave is overall pretty snappy and I only got problems with Recaptcha, which wants me to do a ridiculous amount of tests. Which seemingly is getting worse and worse, especially like the last 2? weeks.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  I have also seen ridiculous captcha repetitions in Brave. But if I do the audio tests, I don’t have to answer nearly as many (2-3 instead of 8-10).
- bsclifton 6y ago
  Fix coming tomorrow for this :) If you don't want to wait, you can check out the pre-release version here: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71 Nightly already has the fix and Beta will get the fix when we finish uplifting Chromium 87 to that channel
  - bsclifton 6y ago
    CAPTCHA fix released just a few mins ago! :)
    - k__ 6y ago
      Nice! What was the issue?
christophilus 6y ago
It’s my daily driver. I’m happy with it. Out of the box, the web is useable. Can’t say the same for any other browser I’ve tried, other than DuckDuckGo on iOS.
- Scott_Sanderson 6y ago
  Same here. I like Brave especially on mobile for blocking web trackers. I find the crypto attention token neat and automatically pay out a few bucks per month to my favorite websites as well as sometimes one-off tips.
hartator 6y ago
I trouble wrapping my mind with the anti-Chromium sentiment. Isn’t monopoly a good thing if it’s an open source monopoly? I don’t seem anyone complaining about the Android monopoly for example or the Linux kernel monopoly.
- throwaway13337 6y ago
  This is a good point. A standardized (and importantly open) platform that executes code exactly the same is the best to execute code on. Flash was terrific because you, as a developer, didn't need to wonder if it would run the same on every machine. It did. It was a major hit to my productivity when Flash went away. HTML5 never really replaced it - mostly due to browser compatibility issues. Flash was not open but chromium is. The future is oddly bright here.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  >I don’t seem anyone complaining about the Android monopoly for example or the Linux kernel monopoly. It's funny because these are very hotly debated and detested monopolies, but I guess that discussion just never happens on hacker news...
- aasasd 6y ago
  Afaik Chromium is controlled by Google's devs. E.g. Google introduces quasi-standards because they benefit YouTube, without consulting anyone else. It's basically IE again. You might say ‘just fork it’, but I'll see how you do that and keep maintaining a full-featured browser. That would also make it not a monopoly. Chromium itself has features tied to Google. The ‘Ungoogled Chromium’ project is dedicated to undoing that. Likewise Android goes where Google wants it to go.
  - bsclifton 6y ago
    Chromium might be Google dominated, but it's definitely an open source project. The reviewers I have worked with have been fair and have granted me more access as I've gotten more involved If you check the commit logs or the AUTHORS file, you'll notice a growing number of non-Google authors https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:AUTHORS https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:A... Microsoft notably has a big presence in the source code and at events like BlinkOn. As each of these folks get their code merged, they gain privs like merge access and start getting tagged as a reviewer in other's change lists
lolc 6y ago
Weird how the affiliate scandal didn't break their neck.
- festivecake 6y ago
  Well, a lot of reporting on the affiliate code situation partly mischaracterized what actually happened. There was an auto-complete suggestion that was auto-selecting when you pressed "enter", and it was fixed shortly thereafter. There is a blog post about it called "On Partner Referral Codes in Brave Suggested Sites". That said, it does essentially the same thing Firefox does when you do a search on Firefox. Try right now: go into Firefox, type in a search in the URL bar, press enter, and you'll see it appends/"injects" a Firefox "affiliate code" as a query parameter so that Firefox gets a cut from Google. One salient difference is that Firefox's "affiliate code" is a vanity code (human readable: "?client=firefox-b-d"), so it isn't viscerally shocking. If it read "?client=brave" like it does on Firefox, it's very likely no one would have ever cared!
  - lolc 6y ago
    Well at least Brave acknowledged the problem. Even if you don't.
songshuu 6y ago
Every, and I do mean EVERY, time Brave hits the front page people like to crap on them ... and yet they keep growing. The more interesting conversation to have is if the growth is linear or early exponential.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Many have admitted that they don't understand how Brave works.
- seibelj 6y ago
  Anytime any good news related to cryptocurrency / blockchain is posted, the trolls come out from under their bridges. HN is very anti-crypto, it’s hard to get unbiased commentary here.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  > and yet they keep growing. They're obviously making up their numbers, probably by 10-100x. Steam is somewhere between 95-105m real MAU, and publishes only real numbers on its games. I know lots of Steam users, many more than 5. I know zero Brave users. Really, there's no way it is anywhere near as popular as they claim. > "The average CTR (click-through rate) for a Brave Ads campaign is 9%, well above the industry average of just 2%" Again, another huge red flag. There's nothing special about Brave browser. It just means there is some adversary, like bots, clicking ads, or they are lying. I'm sure people will downvote this, or talk about whom they know uses Brave. Whatever. I would love to see a real audited number here.
  - gerbler 6y ago
    I use Brave exclusively on mobile (so do 5 other people I know, with various levels of tech literacy). It's fast and blocks ads - that's quite a draw.
scared2 6y ago
Don't be too proud. Many users just because it gives a false promises of free cryptos. Not because of search and replace chrome version. Chrome+ublock is the best way.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Isn't getting paid to view ads a pretty good deal in 2020?
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    No ads is a better deal.
    - ketamine__ 6y ago
      Having the internet is a better deal. And if companies can't make money we won't have it.
Drblessing 6y ago
Last I heard there were ways to farm BAT so be careful investing in it.
Kye 6y ago
I can't even say why I don't want to use it without being downvoted into oblivion. I'm sure there are many wonderful people who use and develop it without going out and being a nuisance, but the fans I encounter the most are horrible. That's not an association I want, and nothing the browser offers is compelling to me.
whateveracct 6y ago
the agency provides :)
interestica 6y ago
The HN crowd seems to really push Firefox. I would love to get an honest opinion on Opera. It's a chromium fork and the biggest criticism just seems to be that it is now owned by a chinese-based consortium. It has just been the most seamless and capable browser I've found with constant innovation.
- britmob 6y ago
  As an Opera user since before the Cheomium switch, it’s honestly a piece of shit now. I constantly find myself annoyed by popups or features that just do not make sense. I really do need to switch to firefox, I just don’t want to lose my add obs..
classics2 6y ago
I dropped Firefox for brave because Firefox dropped support for massive amounts of simple power user features like RSS while claiming they were all “too hard to maintain”. Meanwhile they put massive amounts of time and effort into trying to be a chrome look-alike which adds zero value.
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  I just tried but afaik Brave doesn't support RSS either.
funviolence 6y ago
I use brave because I agree with the creators politics.
FpUser 6y ago
I was originally sceptical of Brave but now it is my main browser
- FpUser 6y ago
  Wow this definitely deserves a downvote. Fucking pathetic.
aww_dang 6y ago
The software is fine, but the BAT ecosystem disturbs me. As someone who has been involved in the affiliate space, accepting a token issued by an ad network seems like a terrible idea. Separation of concerns is important in this case. Instead of the ad network facing the consequences of chargebacks, unfulfilled obligations, fraud and abuse, everyone holding the token will be on the hook. With all of the horrible things that go on in the ad/affiliate industry experienced publishers should be wary of this. Also, as an expat the KYC stuff has generally been insurmountable. Hard to square that with the privacy angle. However, I do look forward to innovation in this space. Brave/BAT has issues, but at least they're doing something.
a_paddy 6y ago
I quit using Brave when I found out they injected their own referal codes in websites without my permission.

433 points by 0xedb 6y ago

pkulak 6y ago

Use Firefox, people. Brave is shady as hell. I'll use Chrome or Edge long before I use Brave.

lenitabinol 6y ago
please elaborate
amitport 6y ago
Can you elaborate?
- coolspot 6y ago
  Probably reference to all crypto-coin related stuff in Brave.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    Even without the crypto stuff, when I installed it, it felt like an intern first eclipse plugin. Few buttons more, a different help page and that's it. Didn't inspire technical strength and quality.
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      That's weird, it's pretty indistinguishable from the other browsers for me. Reminds me of a cross between Opera and Firefox. It's run by one of the principle Firefox devs (Eich) and none of the stories about it ripping people off or being insecure appear to have been well founded. I've used all the major browsers, starting with Mosaic and Netscape, was there when FF was phoenix, have been writing websites for 20 years (only a small amount of that time commercially). YMMV but it seems trustworthy, privacy focused, fast enough (ie I can't tell if it's different in performance terms). It's just reskinned Chrome with privacy extensions built in and a system to enable people to try and send micropayments to sites if the sites are signed up. It's not reminiscent of Eclipse in anyway for me (mind Eclipse to me most evokes poor DE integration, I'm a long time KDE user, and having a billion settings). Use the browser that pleases you most though.
      - agumonkey 6y ago
        Yes it felt like a reskinned Chrome with a few unfinished parts bolted on. And coming from Eich big new project I thought it would be way more polished.
        BrendanEich 6y ago
        When did you try it?
      - hackerfromthefu 6y ago
        Yeah I wonder if most of the Brave allegations (that are usually attached to no actual verifiable facts) are in fact hit pieces on Eich from the bully crowd
- jolmg 6y ago
  > Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
- fuu_dev 6y ago
  Have fun: https://rudism.com/the-brave-browser-is-brilliant/ https://rudism.com/the-brave-browser-is-brilliant/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027
- pkulak 6y ago
  Replacing ads on sites you visit with their ads, wrapped up in a cryptocurrency scheme, like you'd expect from a literal virus, brought to you by a guy too homophobic to be on Mozilla's board. Plus, and I have no evidence of this apart the synchronized hype they do for the browser, but I'm pretty sure Brave is secretly bankrolling those very... political... Linux YouTubers.
  - ColanR 6y ago
    > too homophobic to be on Mozilla's board I do enjoy the irony that Mozilla seems to have gone downhill ever since he left / got kicked out. The people replacing him, IIRC, aren't as knowledgeable or expert as he was. But then, I am somewhat a fan of pure meritocracy.
    - BrendanEich 6y ago
      Thanks for your comment. Of course (to reply to downvoted up-comment), we don't and never did "[replace] ads on sites you visit". But when it comes to evil-me, making false claims is justified? Seems so!
satysin 6y ago
Do you have anything to back that up? I ask because I feel the same but don't actually have any proof that things are shady. It is just a feeling which obviously isn't enough to convince others but is enough to put me off using it the few times I've tried. Something about all this 'rewards' stuff just feels dodgy. No idea why I feel this, I probably read something at some point but don't recall now.
- sam0x17 6y ago
  I've used it for over a year and yeah it's nothing more than a feeling -- experience has just been better than anything else in terms of the default ad blocking. "Disable your ad-blocker" things also leave you alone because they know if you are using Brave you aren't going to budge.
  - Qub3d 6y ago
    That's not how anti-adblocker banners work, generally. Brave is likely just using the anti-anti-adblocker lists, which uBlock and many others now use, as well. [0]: https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-annoyance.txt?a=0 https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-annoyance.txt?a=0 [1]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistry/master/filters/filter_14_Annoyances/filter.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AdguardTeam/FiltersRegistr...
- redvenom 6y ago
  Brave by default collects telemetry data. It is anonymized but any security researcher will tell you that metadata of this nature over time can be more revealing that is claimed. It's right their in their FAQ. Brave's primary customers are advertisers. While this is not evidence in itself, it is certainly something to be wary of.
  - dsissitka 6y ago
    > It's right their in their FAQ. Which FAQ? This appears to be the only FAQ that mentions anonymized data: > Will Brave sell user data to advertisers? > > We do not have access to identifiable user data. The anonymized aggregated ad campaign related data we do collect is used for accounting and reporting, but this data cannot be mapped back to devices or user identities of any kind. Learn more If you follow the "Learn more" link it says: > If you switch on Brave Rewards and switch on ads (in Rewards settings) you will see ad notifications, and will receive BAT to reward you for viewing these ads. It seems like it's off by default?
24t 6y ago
Microsoft and Google are proven bad actors. I'm not much of a believer in 'the devil you know'.
wnevets 6y ago
I rather have google track me than infest my machine with cryptominers.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  That's not how Brave works.
  - Dahoon 6y ago
    If it walks like a duck... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
    - admax88q 6y ago
      Still not a cryptominer.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      "Mining" in the context of crypto has a very specific definition, and Brave doesn't even come close. Mining involves using your computing resources to complete calculations that ensure the security of the blockchain, resulting in a cryptocurrency payout. A company taking money on your behalf without notification, while slimy, isn't mining.
ReptileMan 6y ago
Great - tell me how to make mouse gestures work on ALL pages - that include new tab page/speed dial and firefox internal and I am sold. Unfortunately I don't think that anything short of messing with the code and rebuilding makes it possible.
- atraac 6y ago
  Yup, I use touchpad a lot and lack of proper gesture support on precision touchpads on Windows makes it unusable to me. To this day all bugs regarding this are open and only chromium based browsers support it nicely.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
wussboy 6y ago
The important thing is that we punish companies that are actively trying to fix the problems we all care about because they didn’t fix them perfectly the first time or in exactly the way we would prefer. Sometimes the users on this site sound like they are drowning, but when you throw them a like jacket, they push it away as they complain about the colour.
- mustuhfa 6y ago
  No, we punish them when they have fraudulent practices and when the product is a scam, like brave is. They modify user's input without their consent, they accept money with no guarantee of delivering to the intended target and talk about privacy as a selling point when they run an ad network . I cannot believe how much people turn in to a cult like fanboy for a product they understand very little about.
  - BrendanEich 6y ago
    We fixed the bug where refcodes were added to binance.us and binance.com URLs. That was a blunder, but not a scam. We made no money from it. As for "modify user's input without their consent", go type keywords into any browser, Firefox Safari Chrome Edge etc. You'll see search affiliate client code, same as we had by mistake for the two binance domains, and only as suggestions for other partners (all of this, we removed in the springtime, to quell concerns and misrepresentations such as you make here). We do not "accept money" as intermediary, the browser holds the tips to unverified creators. You seem to be operating on misinformation here. In December 2018 we briefly shipped a system that sent our own funds when directed, back to us, on behalf of unverified creators. That too was a mistake, but we fix bugs and so such tips are now buffered client-side. In any case, we were the source of funds there, not the user. We've taken great pains with Brave Ads (not an "ad network" by the way) to avoid any privacy problems, starting by making them opt-in, using in-browser-only data matched against a fixed-per-population-per-day catalog, confirmed via Privacy Pass (blind signature cryptographi). This is the wave of the future, even Google is trying to do a Privacy Sandbox now, but they are piling up risks and letting partners into the sandbox last I looked. It's clear you have some underlying problem with us, but it isn't based on the facts. What's the story?
ekianjo 6y ago
> Use Firefox, people. Brave is shady as hell. I'll use Chrome or Edge long before I use Brave. Firefox feeds itself in the hand of Google. They won't do anything that will make Google less dominant.
- voidpointercast 6y ago
  And brave doesn’t even attempt that. They perpetuate the Google monopoly and bolt on their own monetization schema as a ‘feature’ toward the user.

chaBha 6y ago

I recently moved away from datahogger chrome. Google is throwing me captcha every single time I use Brave browser, but same thing does not happen when using Safari browser. Why is that?

coolspot 6y ago
User agent string, among orhers, affects how often you get captcha. For example Tor Browser with default user agent gets all the captchas, many rounds per. Same Tor Browser with manually overriden normal Firefox UA barely gets any captchas.
- axaxs 6y ago
  Brave uses Chrome's user agent string.
- ffpip 6y ago
  Tor Browser uses Firefox UA. Brave browser uses Chrome's UA.
  - coolspot 6y ago
    Tor Browser uses one particular Firefox UA, which is very much a give away that you are using Tor Browser.
    - ffpip 6y ago
      Tor browser uses the most popular Firefox UA, used by the extended stable version of Firefox, and used by the thousands of people who turn on privacy.resist.fingerprinting.
pgm8705 6y ago
I'm guessing 3rd party cookie blocking being on by default.
- tinodotim 6y ago

satysin 6y ago

The one feature I wish any other browser would do as well as Chrome is on-the-fly translation. I think Microsoft Edge does this using Bing Translate but I guess as none of the other browser makers have a translation service they can use they instead rely on a wonky extension that uses Google Translate which isn't anywhere near as smooth as the built-in translate in Chrome (naturally). If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them as it is the only thing keeping me on Chrome these days.

sam0x17 6y ago
Because Brave is chromium-based I believe you can actually use that exact feature in Brave if you install the Google Translate extension.
- satysin 6y ago
  Not my experience a few weeks ago when I last tried. It prompts you to install a Google Translate extension that basically just sends the URL to Google's web translate service rather than translate 'in place' like Chrome does.
  - jonathansampson 6y ago
    Google charges (quite a bit) for the translation service. Unfortunately, at this time Brave is only able to offer the Google Translate extension (which we agree isn't as nice).
ColanR 6y ago
I imagine that google can do on-the-fly translation because they can eat the cost of the servers running the translation. Best I've seen for firefox uses deepl, which I've heard (on HN) is better than google translate. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/to-deepl/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/to-deepl/
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  https://Deepl.com/translator https://Deepl.com/translator is really good IME. It provides more fluid translations and some better, more precise use of terms for me when translating technical documents (mechanical engineering) from French/German.

bmarquez 6y ago

Brave recently became my default browser, but I personally don't care for the crypto stuff. The current iOS beta allows users to sync their bookmarks with Windows and iOS privately, and it's what convinced me to switch. I didn't need to create an account with my email address, or install iCloud...just scan a QR code. I wish they'd fix the captcha problem though, a lot of sites that use ReCaptcha think Brave browser users are bots (due to the security).

colordrops 6y ago
I appreciate that you can turn off all of their additional features pretty easily.
bsclifton 6y ago
Fix for the CAPTCHA issue coming! There's a pre-release version out which you can try: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71 Shooting to have the official version out today or tomorrow
- ffpip 6y ago
  Hello! The android browser has another captcha issue for a long time. The captcha is partially rendered outside the screen. I tested this on multiples devices. On Brave Nightly since 6 months. block ads, Fingerprinting - aggressive , 3rd party cookies blocked,
- bsclifton 6y ago
  CAPTCHA fix released just a few mins ago! :)

KMnO4 6y ago

Interesting that a browser designed to block analytics has built in analytics. Is this enabled by default?

renewiltord 6y ago
I was curious too and so I looked it up. I believe it's opt-out https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ Here's a list of the telemetry https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/P3A https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/P3A
fastball 6y ago
Pretty sure the goal is to block 3rd party ads and tracking scripts. The goal was never "block all analytics". For example, I don't think Brave will by default block 1st party analytics either.
- d0gbread 6y ago
  Brave blocks Google Tag Manager completely and that doesn't drop any cookies at all, and Google Analytics which drops first party cookies.

sam0x17 6y ago

The opt-in ads are a bunch of shady crypto-currency things, but I love it. I've actually been making like ~$5/month from ads consistently for almost a year now.

sjtindell 6y ago
Can you elaborate a bit? I'm obviously interested. I just turn on Ads normally?
- topspin 6y ago
  Here it is in a nutshell: By default (you can turn this behavior off if you wish,) Brave will periodically (every 120 minutes or so) popup an ad. The ad doesn't appear 'in the browser window.' On Windows 10, for instance, it pops up in desktop Notifications. The ad is a sentence of text and a button, full stop. No video, audio, animations, or anything creepy. Just a little dialog box you can click or dismiss. Every time that happens you receive BAT, a cryptocurrency, that accumulates in your automatically created BAT account. You do with it what you will but, by default, it is periodically distributed to sites that opt-in to accepting BAT.
  - SwiftyBug 6y ago
    Thus lifting the necessity from websites to display ads in them.
  - ffpip 6y ago
    > By default (you can turn this behavior off if you wish,) It's opt in. Not default
  - sam0x17 6y ago
    You have to "activate" the notification to open the resulting page, or you don't get paid. But it's a quick click and close. Honestly once or twice I've actually looked at the site a bit.
topspin 6y ago

yabones 6y ago

Brave is interesting because its users fall for the 'VPN' fallacy. Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever. Or - with browsers - rather than install and configure Firefox to disable the (very limited) telemetry and configure ad blockers etc, you install a chromium derivative with all the Google pieces replaced with a different flavour of mystery sauce. You're still having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with far less scrutiny than Google.

varispeed 6y ago
Is Google actually under any scrutiny? I get an impression that they can pay their way out of anything or get a slap on the wrist. I agree though that you cannot check if the VPN provider logs your traffic or not even if they claim they don't log it.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  Did Microsoft pay its way out of antitrust back around 2000? The thing with being protected through paying off politicians is that it works, until it doesn’t.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    They did settle, but it is worth noting that Microsoft is not Google. I consider Google to be much higher on the ladder of evil.
    - Craighead 6y ago
      Subjective statements are just that
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    Yes.
6y ago

kylehotchkiss 6y ago

If you work on brave and are reading this... can you stop showing random Crypto banners over nytimes.com and the like? It's very tacky

PretzelPirate 6y ago
I don’t get any crypto banners when I go to nytimes.com in Brave.
- fullstop 6y ago
  I think that this is what they were referring to: https://i.imgur.com/oaZtmen.png https://i.imgur.com/oaZtmen.png I'm not sure why it shows up for nytimes.com, though, and not other sites.
  - jonathansampson 6y ago
    Some times perform a bit of reflection, and scan over global objects in the document window. This can sometimes trigger our dApp-detection logic. The experience should be better in Brave Beta, and in the future we hope to get rid of the problem entirely by removing the current injection-based detection.
    - ffpip 6y ago
      This happens on archive.org, nytimes.com and some smaller sites too. I've turned off all crypto, but this appears on every reload of the site. Can I know if there is a setting to toggle or is this a bug?
bsclifton 6y ago
That's part of "Web3" (aka Dapps) and you can turn it off. Under brave://settings/extensions for `Ethereum provider for using Dapps` pick `None`
- kylehotchkiss 6y ago

mdre 6y ago

Can someone enlighten me on why does literally everyone use Chromium as the engine for their browser? Why does Firefox not have anything comparable to Chromium/Node/Electron? Is Chrome's JS engine that superior or what?

taftster 6y ago
I don't have a real answer for you, more just shades of understanding. I believe it's the case that Chromium is just more extensible and designed for reuse. Whereas Firefox is more monolithic and less able to be extended. I don't think it has anything to do with the javascript engine per se, but more the general API surface that Chromium gives you. There might be some additional benefit that Chrome is the most used browser (currently) and so there might be some developer sentiment or familiarity with it; Chrome's popularity might push adoption for Chromium.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  I don't understand why Mozilla itself doesn't support an Electron clone.
  - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
    Because the people calling the shots don't understand the "market". They've been coasting on their (predecessors') early success for years. Their numbers with respect to audience size is dependent on the same factors that OpenOffice depends on: people with a faint awareness of what the project is / once was but no real exposure to the ins and outs of what has changed about the projects in the last several years.
  - Guidii 6y ago
    Short answer is that the amount of time and energy to create and maintain it wouldn't be justified by the expected gain. I'm not even sure what moz would gain here.
    - jay_kyburz 6y ago

atty 6y ago

I don’t think I’m alone as a Brave user when I say that the crypto stuff and some of their default settings aren’t the greatest, but overall still provides a compelling solution to multiple problems. So while it’s not a perfect product, and the crypto stuff still weirds me out, I find it to be the best option for my personal use case. I get chromium and it’s large library of extensions, as well as having it be decoupled from Google, and some decent Adblock and tracker blocking built in. On the downside, because of the crypto stuff, I feel like I need to double check the news a few times a year to make sure they haven’t made it mandatory, or done anything shady. Overall I’m happy with Brave, and glad to see it growing.

andirk 6y ago

- Uses far less phone battery. - Blocks abuses of web technology, mainly advertising tricks. - Almost identical to Chrome now but not part of the Google monolith. - Use Tor w/ 1 click. Disclosure: I'm invested in $BAT, the browser's native token

fastball 6y ago
Interesting that you don't mention the BAT / pay for attention part of the equation, except as it relates to your own investment.

dshep 6y ago

I've been using Brave most of this year and really like it. The killer feature for me is that it lets you disable scripts for individual websites or 'Allow scripts once'. This basically makes most paywall news sites readable.

fsflover 6y ago
This is exactly what Noscript extension on Firefox does since forever.
- jonathansampson 6y ago
  Much of what Brave does out of the box can be achieved with an array of extensions which have existed for some time. One major appeal of Brave is that these features are built-in, on-by-default, and have no reliance upon Google to not break them moving forward (see Manifest v3 and uBlock Origin, and/or MetaMask being temporarily removed from Google's Web and Play Stores). With Brave, the type of privacy and control users expect is baked-in, and easy to use. Download, Run, and Done. The way it ought to be in 2020
- dshep 6y ago
  Noscript is incredibly fussy and hard to use. Also it does not have the 'allow scripts [to run] once' ability afaict.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Works smooth for me. This option exists too, it’s called “allow temporarily”.
gnicholas 6y ago
I love this feature also. I just wish that when I disable scripts for a website, it would still let my browser plugins that inject JS work. On Firefox, whatever browser plugin I use to block scripts does this out of the box. It makes more sense to do it this way, since I’m not saying “don’t run scripts on pages of this domain”, I’m saying “don’t run scripts originating from pages on this domain”.

quaffapint 6y ago

Recommend Vivaldi (https://vivaldi.com https://vivaldi.com) as an alternative to Brave. Same Chromium based browser, but without any of the crypto stuff and has a lot of nice built-in features. Works on PC/Mac/Linux/Phone.

chrisjarvis 6y ago
+1 Vivaldi is a beautifully designed product in my experience. I haven't used on mobile tho.
eznzt 6y ago
The UI needs a lot of polish. Other than that, good.
- singhkays 6y ago
  I'm confused. UI is one of the things Vivaldi differentiates itself on. What's the polish that they could add?
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
Vivaldi is a browser that feels like "it's almost there" to me. Opera feels like a fully fleshed out and different browser whereas vivaldi feels like "hey weve got a massive backlog of stuff that doesn't even compare to the competition yet." My favorite lightweight browser though is fallon. It's like IE but not as bad.

pachico 6y ago

I use Brave but mostly because it's fast and blocks lots of ads.

mapgrep 6y ago

Brave is the only browser on iOS that lets me turn off javascript on a per-site basis. VERY useful. (If you're aware of others, I'm all ears.)

tristan957 6y ago
Firefox + uBlock Origin
- scpedicini 6y ago
  He said iOS, Firefox on iOS doesn't support addons unfortunately
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

kqvamxurcagg 6y ago

Been using Brave as my main browser for several months now. It's great.

Dahoon 6y ago

>"Malware Passes 20M Monthly Active Users and 7M Daily Active Users"

k__ 6y ago

I switched from Chrome to Firefox two years ago. But last week I swiched to Brave, because Firefox simply couldn't deliver the performance I need for all the heavy weight web apps I use (Cloud9, VSCode, Gravit Designer, Slack, Asana). Brave is overall pretty snappy and I only got problems with Recaptcha, which wants me to do a ridiculous amount of tests.

tinodotim 6y ago
> Brave is overall pretty snappy and I only got problems with Recaptcha, which wants me to do a ridiculous amount of tests. Which seemingly is getting worse and worse, especially like the last 2? weeks.
gnicholas 6y ago
I have also seen ridiculous captcha repetitions in Brave. But if I do the audio tests, I don’t have to answer nearly as many (2-3 instead of 8-10).
bsclifton 6y ago
Fix coming tomorrow for this :) If you don't want to wait, you can check out the pre-release version here: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71 Nightly already has the fix and Beta will get the fix when we finish uplifting Chromium 87 to that channel
- bsclifton 6y ago
  CAPTCHA fix released just a few mins ago! :)
  - k__ 6y ago
    Nice! What was the issue?

christophilus 6y ago

It’s my daily driver. I’m happy with it. Out of the box, the web is useable. Can’t say the same for any other browser I’ve tried, other than DuckDuckGo on iOS.

Scott_Sanderson 6y ago
Same here. I like Brave especially on mobile for blocking web trackers. I find the crypto attention token neat and automatically pay out a few bucks per month to my favorite websites as well as sometimes one-off tips.

hartator 6y ago

I trouble wrapping my mind with the anti-Chromium sentiment. Isn’t monopoly a good thing if it’s an open source monopoly? I don’t seem anyone complaining about the Android monopoly for example or the Linux kernel monopoly.

throwaway13337 6y ago
This is a good point. A standardized (and importantly open) platform that executes code exactly the same is the best to execute code on. Flash was terrific because you, as a developer, didn't need to wonder if it would run the same on every machine. It did. It was a major hit to my productivity when Flash went away. HTML5 never really replaced it - mostly due to browser compatibility issues. Flash was not open but chromium is. The future is oddly bright here.
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
>I don’t seem anyone complaining about the Android monopoly for example or the Linux kernel monopoly. It's funny because these are very hotly debated and detested monopolies, but I guess that discussion just never happens on hacker news...
aasasd 6y ago
Afaik Chromium is controlled by Google's devs. E.g. Google introduces quasi-standards because they benefit YouTube, without consulting anyone else. It's basically IE again. You might say ‘just fork it’, but I'll see how you do that and keep maintaining a full-featured browser. That would also make it not a monopoly. Chromium itself has features tied to Google. The ‘Ungoogled Chromium’ project is dedicated to undoing that. Likewise Android goes where Google wants it to go.
- bsclifton 6y ago
  Chromium might be Google dominated, but it's definitely an open source project. The reviewers I have worked with have been fair and have granted me more access as I've gotten more involved If you check the commit logs or the AUTHORS file, you'll notice a growing number of non-Google authors https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:AUTHORS https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:A... Microsoft notably has a big presence in the source code and at events like BlinkOn. As each of these folks get their code merged, they gain privs like merge access and start getting tagged as a reviewer in other's change lists

lolc 6y ago

Weird how the affiliate scandal didn't break their neck.

festivecake 6y ago
Well, a lot of reporting on the affiliate code situation partly mischaracterized what actually happened. There was an auto-complete suggestion that was auto-selecting when you pressed "enter", and it was fixed shortly thereafter. There is a blog post about it called "On Partner Referral Codes in Brave Suggested Sites". That said, it does essentially the same thing Firefox does when you do a search on Firefox. Try right now: go into Firefox, type in a search in the URL bar, press enter, and you'll see it appends/"injects" a Firefox "affiliate code" as a query parameter so that Firefox gets a cut from Google. One salient difference is that Firefox's "affiliate code" is a vanity code (human readable: "?client=firefox-b-d"), so it isn't viscerally shocking. If it read "?client=brave" like it does on Firefox, it's very likely no one would have ever cared!
- lolc 6y ago
  Well at least Brave acknowledged the problem. Even if you don't.

songshuu 6y ago

Every, and I do mean EVERY, time Brave hits the front page people like to crap on them ... and yet they keep growing. The more interesting conversation to have is if the growth is linear or early exponential.

ketamine__ 6y ago
Many have admitted that they don't understand how Brave works.
seibelj 6y ago
Anytime any good news related to cryptocurrency / blockchain is posted, the trolls come out from under their bridges. HN is very anti-crypto, it’s hard to get unbiased commentary here.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
an_opabinia 6y ago
> and yet they keep growing. They're obviously making up their numbers, probably by 10-100x. Steam is somewhere between 95-105m real MAU, and publishes only real numbers on its games. I know lots of Steam users, many more than 5. I know zero Brave users. Really, there's no way it is anywhere near as popular as they claim. > "The average CTR (click-through rate) for a Brave Ads campaign is 9%, well above the industry average of just 2%" Again, another huge red flag. There's nothing special about Brave browser. It just means there is some adversary, like bots, clicking ads, or they are lying. I'm sure people will downvote this, or talk about whom they know uses Brave. Whatever. I would love to see a real audited number here.
- gerbler 6y ago
  I use Brave exclusively on mobile (so do 5 other people I know, with various levels of tech literacy). It's fast and blocks ads - that's quite a draw.

scared2 6y ago

Don't be too proud. Many users just because it gives a false promises of free cryptos. Not because of search and replace chrome version. Chrome+ublock is the best way.

ketamine__ 6y ago
Isn't getting paid to view ads a pretty good deal in 2020?
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  No ads is a better deal.
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    Having the internet is a better deal. And if companies can't make money we won't have it.

Drblessing 6y ago

Last I heard there were ways to farm BAT so be careful investing in it.

Kye 6y ago

I can't even say why I don't want to use it without being downvoted into oblivion. I'm sure there are many wonderful people who use and develop it without going out and being a nuisance, but the fans I encounter the most are horrible. That's not an association I want, and nothing the browser offers is compelling to me.

whateveracct 6y ago

the agency provides :)

interestica 6y ago

The HN crowd seems to really push Firefox. I would love to get an honest opinion on Opera. It's a chromium fork and the biggest criticism just seems to be that it is now owned by a chinese-based consortium. It has just been the most seamless and capable browser I've found with constant innovation.

britmob 6y ago
As an Opera user since before the Cheomium switch, it’s honestly a piece of shit now. I constantly find myself annoyed by popups or features that just do not make sense. I really do need to switch to firefox, I just don’t want to lose my add obs..

classics2 6y ago

I dropped Firefox for brave because Firefox dropped support for massive amounts of simple power user features like RSS while claiming they were all “too hard to maintain”. Meanwhile they put massive amounts of time and effort into trying to be a chrome look-alike which adds zero value.

jmnicolas 6y ago
I just tried but afaik Brave doesn't support RSS either.

funviolence 6y ago

I use brave because I agree with the creators politics.

FpUser 6y ago

I was originally sceptical of Brave but now it is my main browser

FpUser 6y ago
Wow this definitely deserves a downvote. Fucking pathetic.

aww_dang 6y ago

The software is fine, but the BAT ecosystem disturbs me. As someone who has been involved in the affiliate space, accepting a token issued by an ad network seems like a terrible idea. Separation of concerns is important in this case. Instead of the ad network facing the consequences of chargebacks, unfulfilled obligations, fraud and abuse, everyone holding the token will be on the hook. With all of the horrible things that go on in the ad/affiliate industry experienced publishers should be wary of this. Also, as an expat the KYC stuff has generally been insurmountable. Hard to square that with the privacy angle. However, I do look forward to innovation in this space. Brave/BAT has issues, but at least they're doing something.

a_paddy 6y ago

I quit using Brave when I found out they injected their own referal codes in websites without my permission.