5 ms·

Outsider here: whats wrong with brave? I haven’t touched it but have no reason to distrust it, happy for you to change that for me though

_8j50 5y ago
Brave is based on Chromium, it lacks some of the privacy centric features that are found in Gecko browsers. 1st party isolation,tracker blocking, containers, anti fingerprinting measures and SNI encryption are some things I can think of right now (maybe chrome as caught up now?) Plus, Google controls Chromium and Firefox is literally the only alternative now. They push changes that are against or in in ignorance of of web standards because they can. Downstream browsers like brave,edge and opera basically have to accept whatever Google says. This isn't good for the web at all. Frankly there should be an anti-trust suit against Google for this because it is very anti-competitive.
- my123 5y ago
  You also have Safari (and GNOME Web on Linux) using the WebKit engine, developed by Apple as an alternative... But that's not available on Android or Windows (the WebKit port exists there, but no good UI frontend as far I know)... which are the two big platforms. (because Apple doesn't care enough about those I guess?)
  - deepstack 5y ago
    Wasn't Chrome originally a fork of WebKit when G and A are still buddy buddy?
    - my123 5y ago
      Yes it was. WebKit and Blink then diverged massively after the fork.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    GNOME WebKit definitely isn't Safari. A lot of websites that work in Safari were broken in WebKit last time I tried it. It does replicate a lot of buggy behaviour in Safari so from what I can tell you can be reasonably sure that your website works in Safari if it works in WebKit, but that's the only use I've found for it so far. As for a good UI on Windows, I think you should be able to compile GNOME's WebKit browser for Windows. It'll look terribly out of place like any GNOME application in a different environment, but I think it should work well enough to use?
    - my123 5y ago
      > A lot of websites that work in Safari were broken in WebKit last time I tried it. If you used it in the past from the Debian repos, they didn't use to do security or feature update servicing for WebKit in their repositories. That's no longer a thing nowadays. You can use both the Technology Preview at https://webkit.org/downloads/ https://webkit.org/downloads/ or check if the version is recent on your distribution however.
      - jeroenhd 5y ago
        I've used the webkit browser on Manjaro, which seems to pull it from the AUR which in turn is quite close to upstream.
    - toastal 5y ago
      Recently I've found the opposite to be true. I've on more than one occassion chased bugs that weren't reproducible on Epiphany and I don't own an Apple device to test Safari. The end up back-burnered because the testing situation is bad.
- soundnote 5y ago
  > Brave is based on Chromium, it lacks some of the privacy centric features that are found in Gecko browsers. 1st party isolation,tracker blocking, containers, anti fingerprinting measures and SNI encryption are some things I can think of right now (maybe chrome as caught up now?) What? One of the main points of the project is to build a browser with a whole bunch of tinfoil like tracker blocking and anti fingerprinting measures. They wrote their own built-in adblocker with Rust so it won't get fucked by Manifest v3 since it's part of the browser. They're the only Chromium browser that does CNAME uncloaking, something that uBlock Origin can only do on Firefox. Containers are unique to Firefox, Chromium browsers handle that via separate user profiles.
  - _8j50 5y ago
    I use both brave and firefox daily. Nothing against brave, it has privacy protections as you mentioned, but ff also has privacy centric features that are not in brave. I have not made an empirical evaluation to measure which is better. That said there is a ton I normally configure in about:config that I just can't in Chromium. I only use brave because Firefox isn't good at handling memory intensive sites.
    - soundnote 5y ago
      That is fair, but your original post basically implied that brave doesn't have a bunch of privacy features it very much has and that go beyond basically every other Chromium fork.
creshal 5y ago
Brave's business model is that they bribe you with company scrip ("crypto" "currency") to undergo brainwashing (watch ads), what's not wrong with that?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
progval 5y ago
1. There are some documented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers... 2. it's based on Chromium, contributing to the Blink monoculture 3. BATs are based on Ethereum, which has its own downsides (still PoW, speculation, ...)
Freskis 5y ago
Brave's business model is based on crypto-speculation. Think of the type of business involved with that, and there's your answer.
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  And Firefox's business model is based on Ads - both models are just as scummy as each other.
  - RNCTX 5y ago
    Not really. The ads are just annoying. The cryptocurrency implies fraud.
- soundnote 5y ago
  No? They sell ad space, people buy ad space. Brave shows you ads, gets paid and keeps a cut from that payment, they give their users a cut from that payment. Brave has a tipping service which lets users tip sites they like. End result is advertisers can advertise, and people making content get some of the ad money, the setup's just built to not track people. They're very straightforwardly ad salesmen like every other browser out there, they've just tried to build an ad ecosystem that doesn't track users.
rejectfinite 5y ago
Try just installing base Brave - "Sponsored" backgrounds (often crypto ads or credit cards!) - "Cards" with more weird Crypto ads! - Brave "news" - Brave "rewards" Yes I can turn all that of, and I have, but hard to recommend to normal users that dont spend 10min turning all the shit off. They also did some weird link shit a while back.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  also while we're on the topic of dark patterns, the cards, the sponsored backgrounds and the crypto crap seem to be curiously enough the only settings that don't sync. on every machine you have to turn it all off manually again.
  - prawnsalad 5y ago
    Not to mention they got caught rewriting your URLs to add their own affiliate codes, which is even worse than traditional tracking imo. https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-browser-brave-busted-for-autocompleting-urls-to-versions-it-profits-from/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-browser-brave-busted-f...
    - sieabahlpark 5y ago
      Honestly I'd rather them assault every affiliate link and ad to be their own. I'm using their browser for free, they should get paid for it.
    - ash 5y ago
      Please note they said it was a mistake which was quickly fixed. Bugs happen. https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201 https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 5y ago

_8j50 5y ago

Brave is based on Chromium, it lacks some of the privacy centric features that are found in Gecko browsers. 1st party isolation,tracker blocking, containers, anti fingerprinting measures and SNI encryption are some things I can think of right now (maybe chrome as caught up now?) Plus, Google controls Chromium and Firefox is literally the only alternative now. They push changes that are against or in in ignorance of of web standards because they can. Downstream browsers like brave,edge and opera basically have to accept whatever Google says. This isn't good for the web at all. Frankly there should be an anti-trust suit against Google for this because it is very anti-competitive.

my123 5y ago
You also have Safari (and GNOME Web on Linux) using the WebKit engine, developed by Apple as an alternative... But that's not available on Android or Windows (the WebKit port exists there, but no good UI frontend as far I know)... which are the two big platforms. (because Apple doesn't care enough about those I guess?)
- deepstack 5y ago
  Wasn't Chrome originally a fork of WebKit when G and A are still buddy buddy?
  - my123 5y ago
    Yes it was. WebKit and Blink then diverged massively after the fork.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  GNOME WebKit definitely isn't Safari. A lot of websites that work in Safari were broken in WebKit last time I tried it. It does replicate a lot of buggy behaviour in Safari so from what I can tell you can be reasonably sure that your website works in Safari if it works in WebKit, but that's the only use I've found for it so far. As for a good UI on Windows, I think you should be able to compile GNOME's WebKit browser for Windows. It'll look terribly out of place like any GNOME application in a different environment, but I think it should work well enough to use?
  - my123 5y ago
    > A lot of websites that work in Safari were broken in WebKit last time I tried it. If you used it in the past from the Debian repos, they didn't use to do security or feature update servicing for WebKit in their repositories. That's no longer a thing nowadays. You can use both the Technology Preview at https://webkit.org/downloads/ https://webkit.org/downloads/ or check if the version is recent on your distribution however.
    - jeroenhd 5y ago
      I've used the webkit browser on Manjaro, which seems to pull it from the AUR which in turn is quite close to upstream.
  - toastal 5y ago
    Recently I've found the opposite to be true. I've on more than one occassion chased bugs that weren't reproducible on Epiphany and I don't own an Apple device to test Safari. The end up back-burnered because the testing situation is bad.
soundnote 5y ago
> Brave is based on Chromium, it lacks some of the privacy centric features that are found in Gecko browsers. 1st party isolation,tracker blocking, containers, anti fingerprinting measures and SNI encryption are some things I can think of right now (maybe chrome as caught up now?) What? One of the main points of the project is to build a browser with a whole bunch of tinfoil like tracker blocking and anti fingerprinting measures. They wrote their own built-in adblocker with Rust so it won't get fucked by Manifest v3 since it's part of the browser. They're the only Chromium browser that does CNAME uncloaking, something that uBlock Origin can only do on Firefox. Containers are unique to Firefox, Chromium browsers handle that via separate user profiles.
- _8j50 5y ago
  I use both brave and firefox daily. Nothing against brave, it has privacy protections as you mentioned, but ff also has privacy centric features that are not in brave. I have not made an empirical evaluation to measure which is better. That said there is a ton I normally configure in about:config that I just can't in Chromium. I only use brave because Firefox isn't good at handling memory intensive sites.
  - soundnote 5y ago
    That is fair, but your original post basically implied that brave doesn't have a bunch of privacy features it very much has and that go beyond basically every other Chromium fork.

creshal 5y ago

Brave's business model is that they bribe you with company scrip ("crypto" "currency") to undergo brainwashing (watch ads), what's not wrong with that?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

progval 5y ago

1. There are some documented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers... 2. it's based on Chromium, contributing to the Blink monoculture 3. BATs are based on Ethereum, which has its own downsides (still PoW, speculation, ...)

Freskis 5y ago

Brave's business model is based on crypto-speculation. Think of the type of business involved with that, and there's your answer.

CodeGlitch 5y ago
And Firefox's business model is based on Ads - both models are just as scummy as each other.
- RNCTX 5y ago
  Not really. The ads are just annoying. The cryptocurrency implies fraud.
soundnote 5y ago
No? They sell ad space, people buy ad space. Brave shows you ads, gets paid and keeps a cut from that payment, they give their users a cut from that payment. Brave has a tipping service which lets users tip sites they like. End result is advertisers can advertise, and people making content get some of the ad money, the setup's just built to not track people. They're very straightforwardly ad salesmen like every other browser out there, they've just tried to build an ad ecosystem that doesn't track users.

rejectfinite 5y ago

Try just installing base Brave - "Sponsored" backgrounds (often crypto ads or credit cards!) - "Cards" with more weird Crypto ads! - Brave "news" - Brave "rewards" Yes I can turn all that of, and I have, but hard to recommend to normal users that dont spend 10min turning all the shit off. They also did some weird link shit a while back.

Barrin92 5y ago
also while we're on the topic of dark patterns, the cards, the sponsored backgrounds and the crypto crap seem to be curiously enough the only settings that don't sync. on every machine you have to turn it all off manually again.
- prawnsalad 5y ago
  Not to mention they got caught rewriting your URLs to add their own affiliate codes, which is even worse than traditional tracking imo. https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-browser-brave-busted-for-autocompleting-urls-to-versions-it-profits-from/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-browser-brave-busted-f...
  - sieabahlpark 5y ago
    Honestly I'd rather them assault every affiliate link and ad to be their own. I'm using their browser for free, they should get paid for it.
  - ash 5y ago
    Please note they said it was a mistake which was quickly fixed. Bugs happen. https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201 https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
5y ago