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I now use Brave on everything: Linux, Mac, iOS, iPadOS. Mozilla has some really weird stuff going on in their financials that bother me, and as a result, I jus

I now use Brave on everything: Linux, Mac, iOS, iPadOS. Mozilla has some really weird stuff going on in their financials that bother me, and as a result, I just can’t use their products anymore. This is similar to my feelings about Google, Microsoft, and so on. I prefer tech companies to just be tech companies and not branch into other fields. I understand that Brave’s stance on certain things bleeds into politics with things like thwarting censorship and encouraging encryption, but those are also still technical problems. Tossing money at social issues isn’t what I want out of a tech company. Full disclosure: philosophically, I am an anarchist. You should look for yourself at Mozilla’s financials if you don’t agree with my politics. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-2021-fs-final-1010.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202... https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/ https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990-ty21-public-disclosure.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990... Also, just search up some of the organizations and stuff that get mentioned here. It’s weird. ————- Edit: so, of their 1.1billion dollars in assets (the foundation, and two wholly owned for profit subsidiaries) Mozilla cut 100 million from software development expenses, while at the same time spending large sums of money on groups with no tie to software at all. It also seems that the vast majority of their revenue comes from Google search inclusion as default in Firefox… so why cut the software development funding? Regarding Brave, it’s funded by Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Digital Currency Group, Pathfinder, Foundation Capital, Rising Tide, Hone Capital, Propel Venture Partners and through their BAT tokens. I find the crypto side annoying, but that doesn’t feel as morally “icky” as some of things Mozilla appears to do (calling themselves a non-profit without mentioning for-profit subsidiaries, spending money on things that have nothing to do with software, reducing funding to the development of their core product). In short, I kind of hate all major browsers, but there aren’t good ones to choose from so I try to pick one that feels least-evil. When LadyBird browser gets to some kind of truly usable level, I will certainly switch to it for daily use. https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform-browser-project/ https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...

notafraudster 4y ago
I clicked on your links but I don't really understand what it is I'm meant to be seeing. I haven't read a balance sheet since college, but things look pretty normal to me? Is the objection that about 2% of their expenses are on Grants and donations? Is it that they make revenue through a VPN subscription they offer? Is it that their taxes show spending about $14 million (a drop on the bucket) on policy programming (mostly it seems about building the Common Voice dataset and funding external data scientists to work on data stewardship policy stuff; these feel, I think, like what you're suggesting that it's fine for Brave to do because they're "technical problems"?) I read -- skimmed, but I think that's fair -- through a dozen pages to try to understand your point and nothing jumped out at me. There's a part where they talk about how they made a few thousand dollars from credit card rewards points. I did a ctrl+f for "woke" and "transgender" and "critical race theory" and "covid vaccination" and "cico versus macro-based dieting strategies" and didn't find anything. It's a little frustrating because I spent more time trying to figure out your point than you spent to make it.
buttspelunker 4y ago
> You should look for yourself at Mozilla’s financials if you don’t agree with my politics. It has nothing to do with your politics, but I shall continue to not care about Mozilla's financials.
Aissen 4y ago
Can you show us how did you inspect Brave's financials ?
theandrewbailey 4y ago
I'm not an anarchist, but I did the same thing for the same reasons.
lxgr 4y ago
Sure, Mozilla seems to have quite severe organizational issues, but to me, the deep integration of a crypto wallet into Brave is what's keeping me away from it. A Crypto pivot didn't end well for Opera, it ruined one of my favorite OSM apps for iOS (maps.me; fortunately there's an open source spin-off available now, i.e. Organic Maps), it left a bad taste in my mouth when Signal did it... I use Firefox as my main browser, and more or less consider my relationship with Mozilla to be not different from any other corporation – as long as the product itself works for me and doesn't seem to be heading into a predatory direction (e.g. heavily pushing a subscription model, needlessly collecting data server-side etc.), I'm fine with its creators spending their money however they see fit. That said, I'll also definitely not donate to Mozilla in its current state.
- 3np 4y ago
  Opera was ruined by many other things. The new owners (since 2016) have been running it into the ground basically. The ads, tracking, dark UX patterns, performance regression, and social media integrations are things that together made it for me, even before I heard how even OG ex-Opera employees won't touch it out of mistrust anymore... The crypto wallet you can take or leave, it's not like they shove it in your face.
- propogandist 4y ago
  It’s possible to be completely bearish on the crypto ponzi, and use Brave with all the crypto features completely disabled. Their crypto play is a novel revenue generation scheme which doubles as a “web3” marketing campaign to acquire a niche userbase. Good for them, but it’s not for me so I opt out all of it, and it’s trivial to do so. Brave is more aggressive on protecting user privacy than all the other browsers also, including Mozilla who is completely dependent on Google to pay their bills.
trimethylpurine 4y ago
I'm not seeing what's troubling here. Going strictly off of the examples you provided, I see that they largely hold their donations as bonds, while re-donating the rest to either purchase open source software or, at the government level, prevent tech companies from selling privacy or participating in censorship. As an anarchist, wouldn't that be something you'd approve of? I don't use Firefox. I find the UI to be clunky. But after reading your examples I'm persuaded to switch.
- Keegs 4y ago
  > As an anarchist, wouldn’t that be something you’d approve of? I suspect GP considers themself an anarchist in the pop culture sense, which has little in common with the political practice.

notafraudster 4y ago

I clicked on your links but I don't really understand what it is I'm meant to be seeing. I haven't read a balance sheet since college, but things look pretty normal to me? Is the objection that about 2% of their expenses are on Grants and donations? Is it that they make revenue through a VPN subscription they offer? Is it that their taxes show spending about $14 million (a drop on the bucket) on policy programming (mostly it seems about building the Common Voice dataset and funding external data scientists to work on data stewardship policy stuff; these feel, I think, like what you're suggesting that it's fine for Brave to do because they're "technical problems"?) I read -- skimmed, but I think that's fair -- through a dozen pages to try to understand your point and nothing jumped out at me. There's a part where they talk about how they made a few thousand dollars from credit card rewards points. I did a ctrl+f for "woke" and "transgender" and "critical race theory" and "covid vaccination" and "cico versus macro-based dieting strategies" and didn't find anything. It's a little frustrating because I spent more time trying to figure out your point than you spent to make it.

buttspelunker 4y ago

> You should look for yourself at Mozilla’s financials if you don’t agree with my politics. It has nothing to do with your politics, but I shall continue to not care about Mozilla's financials.

Aissen 4y ago

Can you show us how did you inspect Brave's financials ?

theandrewbailey 4y ago

I'm not an anarchist, but I did the same thing for the same reasons.

lxgr 4y ago

Sure, Mozilla seems to have quite severe organizational issues, but to me, the deep integration of a crypto wallet into Brave is what's keeping me away from it. A Crypto pivot didn't end well for Opera, it ruined one of my favorite OSM apps for iOS (maps.me; fortunately there's an open source spin-off available now, i.e. Organic Maps), it left a bad taste in my mouth when Signal did it... I use Firefox as my main browser, and more or less consider my relationship with Mozilla to be not different from any other corporation – as long as the product itself works for me and doesn't seem to be heading into a predatory direction (e.g. heavily pushing a subscription model, needlessly collecting data server-side etc.), I'm fine with its creators spending their money however they see fit. That said, I'll also definitely not donate to Mozilla in its current state.

3np 4y ago
Opera was ruined by many other things. The new owners (since 2016) have been running it into the ground basically. The ads, tracking, dark UX patterns, performance regression, and social media integrations are things that together made it for me, even before I heard how even OG ex-Opera employees won't touch it out of mistrust anymore... The crypto wallet you can take or leave, it's not like they shove it in your face.
propogandist 4y ago
It’s possible to be completely bearish on the crypto ponzi, and use Brave with all the crypto features completely disabled. Their crypto play is a novel revenue generation scheme which doubles as a “web3” marketing campaign to acquire a niche userbase. Good for them, but it’s not for me so I opt out all of it, and it’s trivial to do so. Brave is more aggressive on protecting user privacy than all the other browsers also, including Mozilla who is completely dependent on Google to pay their bills.

trimethylpurine 4y ago

I'm not seeing what's troubling here. Going strictly off of the examples you provided, I see that they largely hold their donations as bonds, while re-donating the rest to either purchase open source software or, at the government level, prevent tech companies from selling privacy or participating in censorship. As an anarchist, wouldn't that be something you'd approve of? I don't use Firefox. I find the UI to be clunky. But after reading your examples I'm persuaded to switch.

Keegs 4y ago
> As an anarchist, wouldn’t that be something you’d approve of? I suspect GP considers themself an anarchist in the pop culture sense, which has little in common with the political practice.