5 ms·

There hasn't been a comment or status change to this bug in three years. I've been giving Brave a shot due to their recent addition of first-class support for

There hasn't been a comment or status change to this bug in three years. I've been giving Brave a shot due to their recent addition of first-class support for IPFS, and the numerous positive HN comments. It's... So much faster. However, it does a poor job of blocking advertisements and trackers. I'll be going back to Firefox for that reason, I can suffer the slowness. One common response regarding performance woes on Firefox is that common addons, particularly uBlock, process a large amount of data through complex rules during page load. What I haven't heard is any plans on the part of Mozilla to support that level of ad-blocking and privacy protection at the product level, rather than the extension level, which may provide much needed performance enhancements. uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everwhere, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger, au-revoir-utm et al should be native features at this point.

pixxel 6y ago
For those of us that haven’t heard of au-revoir-utm: > How annoying are those "utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss" in URLs ? Right! > So this extension removes them and prevents you from being tracked. > Source code at https://github.com/Rik/au-revoir-utm https://github.com/Rik/au-revoir-utm
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  I prefer CleaURLs, it also removes UTM parameters plus a number of other tracking parameters: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/
  - dleslie 6y ago
    That's a good one, thank-you.
Funes- 6y ago
>It's... So much faster. However, it does a poor job of blocking advertisements and trackers. I'll be going back to Firefox for that reason, I can suffer the slowness. You can block ads just by editing your hosts file. There's no need to depend on any browser's particular functionality in order to get rid of them. Nor on extra hardware (Pi-hole), for that matter. I have a cron job download a prefilled copy from a popular github repository [1] daily. [1] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
- dleslie 6y ago
  That doesn't scrub all advertisements without also going full-nuclear on certain social media sites and video services.
- pythux 6y ago
  Blocking by hostnames is a big part of adblocking, but if you want to really block all ads and also not break the Web, you need an in-browser tech to do things like element hiding, scriptlet injections, etc. Which cannot be done via host files.
  - rangoon626 6y ago
    The other thing is that hosts file records appear to not hold in Firefox by default because of the https everywhere and the secure dns features they added. Drives me bonkers sometimes when I forget to turn off
- arduinomancer 6y ago
  That doesn't work if the website serves the ads from the same domain as the content. For example YouTube ads.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    0.0.0.0 youtube.com
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  How do you selectively turn off this functionality for websites that don't work with such blocking?
- mp3geek 6y ago
  Blocking ads via hosts file is a very basic method, delivers no flexibility to get around js/css, whitelisting sites. Acceptable only in a Pi-hole environment, but not in a stand alone browser.
pea 6y ago
Out of interest, why not use uBlock on brave? That's my setup.
- anderber 6y ago
  You can also customize Brave's adblock in brave://adblock/
- drak0n1c 6y ago
  AdGuard with Brave is another solid option (extension and Mac app).
  - lmedinas 6y ago
    with Safari is pretty terrible.
- webmobdev 6y ago
  Brave is based on Chrome (Chromium / Blink) and Google has deliberaely crippled ad-blocking extensions for it: - https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-still-plans-to-cripple-ad-blocking-in-chrome-but-enterprises-will-be-exempt/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-still-plans-to-cripple-... - https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 So you will get a sub-par ad-blocking / anti-tracking experience on Chrome or any of its clones like Brave or Vivaldi.
eznzt 6y ago
All those extensions are also available on Brave (and all Chromium derivatives), and the browser themselves are always faster than Firefox.
gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
Let me tell you the future of using brave: you give chrome engine total rule of the law for web "standards". Google can mold the web to their desires. If you use firefox, google have to at least play nice. What's the point of using a browser frontend (used to be called chrome, but i guess google stole even the words) if tomorrow all the content depend on google-owned DRM? You will only be able to use your fancy ipfs or whatever transport if you have the google blessed keys or whatnot.
- RedComet 6y ago
  It sounds good in theory, but it just isn't true. Mozilla is null factor these days, and most of their income has actually been from Google. Google is most likely keeping them afloat just to ward off a stray monopoly charge at this point.
  - pygy_ 6y ago
    It became clear to me with the recent layoffs. Their strategy to grow their user share seemed twofold: better tech (through Servo/Rust) and dev-oriented features (their market share among devs was much higher than among the general population). They cut deeply into both of these.
    - pygy_ 6y ago
      Adding to this: Getting back dev mindshare was IMO critical for their success. 90% of https://webcompat.com/ https://webcompat.com/ is sites that are broken in Firefox, not necessarily because FF isn't standard compliant, but because many Web devs just dont bother testing their sites/apps with it anymore. As for better tech I suppose they chose a 80/20 approach, but I'm not sure it will suffice.
  - gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
    Well, to be honest, nowadays I think that the sooner mozilla dies, the better for firefox :( But anything will only happens if there's a user base as contributors are a (small) ratio from that number.
hiimtroymclure 6y ago
how does brave do a poor job of blocking advertisements and trackers? Its the main reason I use it and _I think_ it works well but never done any kind of analysis (nor would I even know how to). Could you elaborate on this for the uninformed?
Isthatablackgsd 6y ago
> Decentraleyes I would recommend LocalCDN over Decentraleyes. They covers CDNs (more than Decentraleyes) and various libraries such as javascripts (like jQuery) and frameworks.
- dleslie 6y ago
  Thanks, I'll try that.
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
> uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everwhere, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger, au-revoir-utm et al should be native features at this point. these constant debacles of add-ons and extensions being sold to adversarial maintainers, it's a good time to do integrate this if they are serious about security and privacy. I understand blocklists are a massively sensitive topic for mozilla however.
mbaye 6y ago
Firefox recently added HTTPS-Only Mode setting, basically equivalent to HTTPS Everywhere.
- ffpip 6y ago
  HTTPS only mode displays a warning every time the HTTPS version is not available. HTTPS Everywhere/Brave tries to upgrade connections to https, if not falls back without throwing up annoying warnings.
mp3geek 6y ago
> So much faster. However, it does a poor job of blocking advertisements and trackers. I'll be going back to Firefox for that reason, I can suffer the slowness. What issues are you having with the blocking? /Disclaimer, Brave webcompat support
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  Not OP, but it doesn't block Twitter sponsored posts for me.
  - mp3geek 6y ago
    Clear cookies/cache, re-login. Check ads/trackers = Aggressive. We mostly fixed the twitter ads a while back.
- dleslie 6y ago
  Reddit, Twitter and other social media sponsored posts and ads are not blocked; and I saw a YouTube ad for the first time in ages. Generally, I run uBlock with all-but-regional block lists enabled. Oh, and Brave has its own ads.
  - haha_lul 6y ago
    I don't like BAT and wish it could be removed like any other extension, but it's opt in? Also, what's stopping you from installing uBlock on Brave? Considering Chrome doesn't ship with any adblocker, is it not beneficial (given your preference for adblocking) to provide an adblocker out of the box, given you still have the ability to use any extensions you would use with any other browser?
    - dleslie 6y ago
      I suppose I opted in as a result of just clicking through some dialogues during install. The only strong reason I have to keep using Firefox is to support ongoing development of an alternative to chrome's rendering engine on PC.

pixxel 6y ago

For those of us that haven’t heard of au-revoir-utm: > How annoying are those "utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss" in URLs ? Right! > So this extension removes them and prevents you from being tracked. > Source code at https://github.com/Rik/au-revoir-utm https://github.com/Rik/au-revoir-utm

KozmoNau7 6y ago
I prefer CleaURLs, it also removes UTM parameters plus a number of other tracking parameters: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/
- dleslie 6y ago
  That's a good one, thank-you.

Funes- 6y ago

>It's... So much faster. However, it does a poor job of blocking advertisements and trackers. I'll be going back to Firefox for that reason, I can suffer the slowness. You can block ads just by editing your hosts file. There's no need to depend on any browser's particular functionality in order to get rid of them. Nor on extra hardware (Pi-hole), for that matter. I have a cron job download a prefilled copy from a popular github repository [1] daily. [1] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

dleslie 6y ago
That doesn't scrub all advertisements without also going full-nuclear on certain social media sites and video services.
pythux 6y ago
Blocking by hostnames is a big part of adblocking, but if you want to really block all ads and also not break the Web, you need an in-browser tech to do things like element hiding, scriptlet injections, etc. Which cannot be done via host files.
- rangoon626 6y ago
  The other thing is that hosts file records appear to not hold in Firefox by default because of the https everywhere and the secure dns features they added. Drives me bonkers sometimes when I forget to turn off
arduinomancer 6y ago
That doesn't work if the website serves the ads from the same domain as the content. For example YouTube ads.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  0.0.0.0 youtube.com
michaelmrose 6y ago
How do you selectively turn off this functionality for websites that don't work with such blocking?
mp3geek 6y ago
Blocking ads via hosts file is a very basic method, delivers no flexibility to get around js/css, whitelisting sites. Acceptable only in a Pi-hole environment, but not in a stand alone browser.

pea 6y ago

Out of interest, why not use uBlock on brave? That's my setup.

anderber 6y ago
You can also customize Brave's adblock in brave://adblock/
drak0n1c 6y ago
AdGuard with Brave is another solid option (extension and Mac app).
- lmedinas 6y ago
  with Safari is pretty terrible.
webmobdev 6y ago
Brave is based on Chrome (Chromium / Blink) and Google has deliberaely crippled ad-blocking extensions for it: - https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-still-plans-to-cripple-ad-blocking-in-chrome-but-enterprises-will-be-exempt/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-still-plans-to-cripple-... - https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 So you will get a sub-par ad-blocking / anti-tracking experience on Chrome or any of its clones like Brave or Vivaldi.

eznzt 6y ago

All those extensions are also available on Brave (and all Chromium derivatives), and the browser themselves are always faster than Firefox.

gcblkjaidfj 6y ago

Let me tell you the future of using brave: you give chrome engine total rule of the law for web "standards". Google can mold the web to their desires. If you use firefox, google have to at least play nice. What's the point of using a browser frontend (used to be called chrome, but i guess google stole even the words) if tomorrow all the content depend on google-owned DRM? You will only be able to use your fancy ipfs or whatever transport if you have the google blessed keys or whatnot.

RedComet 6y ago
It sounds good in theory, but it just isn't true. Mozilla is null factor these days, and most of their income has actually been from Google. Google is most likely keeping them afloat just to ward off a stray monopoly charge at this point.
- pygy_ 6y ago
  It became clear to me with the recent layoffs. Their strategy to grow their user share seemed twofold: better tech (through Servo/Rust) and dev-oriented features (their market share among devs was much higher than among the general population). They cut deeply into both of these.
  - pygy_ 6y ago
    Adding to this: Getting back dev mindshare was IMO critical for their success. 90% of https://webcompat.com/ https://webcompat.com/ is sites that are broken in Firefox, not necessarily because FF isn't standard compliant, but because many Web devs just dont bother testing their sites/apps with it anymore. As for better tech I suppose they chose a 80/20 approach, but I'm not sure it will suffice.
- gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
  Well, to be honest, nowadays I think that the sooner mozilla dies, the better for firefox :( But anything will only happens if there's a user base as contributors are a (small) ratio from that number.

hiimtroymclure 6y ago

how does brave do a poor job of blocking advertisements and trackers? Its the main reason I use it and _I think_ it works well but never done any kind of analysis (nor would I even know how to). Could you elaborate on this for the uninformed?

Isthatablackgsd 6y ago

> Decentraleyes I would recommend LocalCDN over Decentraleyes. They covers CDNs (more than Decentraleyes) and various libraries such as javascripts (like jQuery) and frameworks.

dleslie 6y ago
Thanks, I'll try that.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

> uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everwhere, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger, au-revoir-utm et al should be native features at this point. these constant debacles of add-ons and extensions being sold to adversarial maintainers, it's a good time to do integrate this if they are serious about security and privacy. I understand blocklists are a massively sensitive topic for mozilla however.

mbaye 6y ago

Firefox recently added HTTPS-Only Mode setting, basically equivalent to HTTPS Everywhere.

ffpip 6y ago
HTTPS only mode displays a warning every time the HTTPS version is not available. HTTPS Everywhere/Brave tries to upgrade connections to https, if not falls back without throwing up annoying warnings.

mp3geek 6y ago

> So much faster. However, it does a poor job of blocking advertisements and trackers. I'll be going back to Firefox for that reason, I can suffer the slowness. What issues are you having with the blocking? /Disclaimer, Brave webcompat support

nonbirithm 6y ago
Not OP, but it doesn't block Twitter sponsored posts for me.
- mp3geek 6y ago
  Clear cookies/cache, re-login. Check ads/trackers = Aggressive. We mostly fixed the twitter ads a while back.
dleslie 6y ago
Reddit, Twitter and other social media sponsored posts and ads are not blocked; and I saw a YouTube ad for the first time in ages. Generally, I run uBlock with all-but-regional block lists enabled. Oh, and Brave has its own ads.
- haha_lul 6y ago
  I don't like BAT and wish it could be removed like any other extension, but it's opt in? Also, what's stopping you from installing uBlock on Brave? Considering Chrome doesn't ship with any adblocker, is it not beneficial (given your preference for adblocking) to provide an adblocker out of the box, given you still have the ability to use any extensions you would use with any other browser?
  - dleslie 6y ago
    I suppose I opted in as a result of just clicking through some dialogues during install. The only strong reason I have to keep using Firefox is to support ongoing development of an alternative to chrome's rendering engine on PC.