26 ms·

Brave is a fork, not a Chromium reskin

306 points by jacooper 3y ago

readingnews 3y ago
Huh, well I hate the twitter splash screen now, but at the same time, I too fall into the camp of "I do not use it as it is a Chrome reskin". Well, I mean, I do not like Chrome. I wonder if there is a list, not on twitter, about what precisely was removed instead of just a twitter blurb. Ops! <esc>:%s/twitter/x/g
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  The post links to https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
  - dave_walko 3y ago
    lol, yea, first thing I saw and even after 2 years I am impressed. Brave has been my goto on my mac forever it seems. I have tried everything but Arc. I want to like safari but lack of extensions (that I use) kill it for me.
    - navanchauhan 3y ago
      Try Orion Browser, it uses the same WebKit engine as Safari but lets you install extensions from the Chrome Web Store (yes, uBlock Origin works) Orion also has an iOS version, and afaik they are also working on making a Windows version as well
      - frizlab 3y ago
        As much as I’d _love_ to see a windows version of Orion, I’m afraid we’re still far from it https://orionfeedback.org/d/2895-can-we-pleas-get-this-app-on-microsoft-windows-pleas/2 https://orionfeedback.org/d/2895-can-we-pleas-get-this-app-o...
        dopidopHN 3y ago
        What’s wrong with Firefox ?
        troyvit 3y ago
        It's too fast (https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perfherder/graphs?timerange=31536000&series=mozilla-central,3735773,1,13&series=mozilla-central,3412459,1,13 https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perfherder/graphs?timerange=3...).
        frizlab 3y ago
        Nothing, I just like Orion.
      - miki123211 3y ago
        Like all other third-party browsers, Orion has no Keychain support, no auto-filling of 2FA codes, no support for Hide my Email / Private Relay, and no synchronization of Bookmarks/History with Launchbar and iCloud. Thanks but no thanks, I like my Safari.
        freediver 3y ago
        Not sure where you got that but for the sake of facts: Orion has Keychain support. Orion has auto-filling 2FA codes. Orion has iCloud sync. If any one of those are not working as expected you should report it to orionfeedback.org Private relay is an Apple service that is not available to third party apps.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    Unless the tweet is adding more context, I'd request the github link be used instead. I don't have Twitter and the user experience is extremely limited when you aren't logged in.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I'd be ok with twitter links if the tweet being linked to was also quoted in the description. That would make it useful to those of us who don't go to twitter.
- hooverd 3y ago
  https://nitter.net/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304 https://nitter.net/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304
- troyvit 3y ago
  I can't tell you what was removed, but one recent addition is the word "Chrome" in the user agent string.[1] [1] https://explore.whatismybrowser.com/useragents/explore/software_name/brave/ https://explore.whatismybrowser.com/useragents/explore/softw...
  - dharmab 3y ago
    There are good privacy reasons to use a Chrome-like user agent: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/-2JIRNMWJ7s/m/yHe4tQNLCgAJ?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/-2JIR...
  - dev_daftly 3y ago
    User agent strings are all fake and should just be removed. Browsers modify them to game what servers send them, Microsoft had a great blog post about it when they released edge showing the difference in what it received based on user agent string changes.
baal80spam 3y ago
> We won’t be shipping WEI support, just as we disable or otherwise nullify lots of other junk that Google puts into Chromium. Most relevant part of the tweet. Go Brave!
- worksonmine 3y ago
  I never tried Brave, but they lost all credibility when they injected their own affiliate links in Coinbase URLs. I like that they use their own index in their search engine, but I will never use it, better alternatives exist and my trust is easy to lose and almost impossible to regain. So no, fuck Brave.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    Not sure why this is downvoted. Here is a relevant link https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caught-adding-its-own-referral-codes-to-some-cryptcurrency-trading-sites/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caugh...
  - mock-possum 3y ago
    only thing I use brave for is bypassing youtube ads on ios
    - JofArnold 3y ago
      You can do that with Vinegar Safari plugin combined with ad blockers
johnnymorgan 3y ago
I posted a reply about Brave and got shouted down about it being a clone but I was sure it was a fork. Thank you for the confirmation I've migrated my desktops to Brave a while ago, it's just mobile I've been lazy on..whelp here is the motivation haha
ncphil 3y ago
Totally personal preference, but not a fan of the Brave UI. At least from my perspective they (like Vivaldi and Edge) are trying too hard to distinguish themselves from the outward look and feel of Chromium. It's their right as a fork, and that of whoever finds it works for them. I'm not even bothered by (or much notice) the built-in crypto-based gamification. I just wish someone would do a minimalist fork of Chromium, maybe with a rudimentary sync service.
- bragr 3y ago
  The gamification is a pretty out of date hot take now. They still have that crypto stuff, but they pivoted about a year ago to try to sell the built in VPN and get more value out of their search engine to raise revenue instead.
  - jacooper 3y ago
    And their search engine is actually pretty good
  - baal80spam 3y ago
    The best part is that right click is all it takes to hide the VPN and other stuff from the UI. I usually do it first thing after I install Brave and never see it again.
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    Honestly Firefox is way worse than brave in terms of intrusive stuff. When Firefox updates I get full screen ads for their VPN and whatnot. Brave has never done anything like that to me. Hide the features you don’t want once, never see them again.
    - Given_47 3y ago
      Yea I found there were a lot more FF config settings to disable as well. These threads always unfold the same way tho. Brave gets lambasted by some, the people that enjoy using Brave end up being “well actually” guys etc etc. And I use both Brave and FF in addition to occasional librewolf they’re all useful
kylec 3y ago
Glad it won't include Google's WEI, but it's not like it doesn't have it's own weird junk like BAT, so I guess pick your poison.
- SkyMarshal 3y ago
  You can use Brave and never even enable its crypto wallet. It’s an opt-in setting iirc.
  - gochi 3y ago
    Opt in setting doesn't mean much here. While it's technically true the crypto stuff isn't "enabled", it's constantly pushed to you with no option to remove all of that during installation. I'll walk you through it: Upon loading the browser on a fresh install, you are greeted with a new tab page pushing Brave Rewards. With manipulative UX, there is no button to disagree or remove the feature, only a button for "start using rewards". You can hide it by clicking the 3 dots, which for most users they're never going to do unfortunately. Looking at the address bar, there's a triangle up there with a badge. Hiding the new tab Rewards card doesn't hide this triangle. Clicking on this does not show a remove feature option. Beside that, there's a sidebar button and a wallet icon again with a badge. Clicking on this only shows a learn more button. I can right click both of these, and finally see a hide option. Finally all of that is hidden. Maybe I browse a page or so, and then open a new tab. I'm shown an ad on the new tab screen. Right clicking it shows no hide button. So I'll try the customize button. Here's where you have to scroll down and disable the "show sponsored images" option. All done, right? Ok let's browse Reddit for a bit. There's where you see the "tip" button under every post. Right clicking shows nothing about hiding it. So into the settings you have to go to finally remove the last bit of the feature and be prompted to relaunch the browser.
    - lostmsu 3y ago
      > Ok let's browse Reddit for a bit. There's where you see the "tip" button under every post. Wait, that actually sounds like a great feature! Is there a way to get it for other browsers?
insanitybit 3y ago
Brave is really the browser to bet on and I wish people would give them more credit. Brave's position is that the web is broken - advertising is bad for the web as a single form of monetization. I really agree with that. They then ask the important question "so how do we envision the future of monetization?" and I guess that rubs people the wrong way but... it's a critical question, we can't just say "sorry, websites can't fund themselves", we need an alternative. I am about as anti-blockchain as they come, but the reality is that blockchain has one very specific use case - hostile, unauthenticated users, who need to prove that work has been done. That's the model of a website serving customers - you have no idea who they are, they could be trying to lie to you, etc. It's at least not a bad fit for the technology. At minimum they're trying something new and I think that's extremely worthwhile - it's not like their coin is their only asset, they are trying to actually sell value to customers. I believe Brave is far more mission aligned and practical than Mozilla is. They've already done a far better job around things like their VPN, TOR mode, etc.
- elforce002 3y ago
  100% agreed. I've been using it since 2021 and I can't complain. I switched to their search too and the experience is ok too. Shebangs and their integration with stackoverflow is getting better.
- chomp 3y ago
  "browser to bet on" is a broken way of looking at the web, and puts us right back where we are now. We need browser diversity, not a single point of failure. Brave, Mozilla, Safari, and the other non-Chromium based browsers are all fine picks in our current situation.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    I think Brave has the best opportunity to compete against Chrome, which turns the world from a 'one browser monopoly' to at least a world with two browsers. That is not "right back where we are now" at all. I don't really care at all about webkit or v8 being used everywhere nearly as much as I care about web standards and an organization having the power to push back or contribute to them. I don't think the benefits of having competing JS engines really warrant much effort relative to what I'm advocating for.
xnx 3y ago
A distinction without a difference. Brave changes some things and adds some of its own junk. Currently my trust of Google is much greater than my trust of Brave.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  > Currently my trust of Google is much greater than my trust of Brave. What has Brave ever done that comes even close to trying to DRM the entire web?
- isanjay 3y ago
  Really? Or you meant the other way around ?
- croes 3y ago
  And what use is this trust to you? They gave you WEI.
- ubertaco 3y ago
  Meh, I don't really see it as an "either-or", but as a "neither". Do you trust: - Google, who's trying to DRM the web by building a majority-market-share browser engine and jamming their DRM into it, or - Brave, who takes that same Google browser engine, _supposedly_ strips "junk" out (but based on their own arbitrary selection criteria) while also adding crypto and rewriting links to add their own affiliate trackers? If you answered one of those two, I'd ask why. And if you said "because what other option is there", _then_ you'd finally be asking the right question.
K0nserv 3y ago
Fork or not, they obviously integrated almost everything from the upstream. Keeping a long-running fork that's increasingly diverging is not a simple task. Does Brave have the man-power to sustain their fork if it diverges sufficiently that they can no longer integrate upstream changes? EDIT: My broader point being, Brave's mission is less compatible with Google's and as such it's unfortunate they aren't basing Brave on Gecko. I know the whole history with Brendan Eich and Mozilla, as well as the problems with extending and embedding Gecko. Still, seems like an unfortunate outcome
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- soupbowl 3y ago
  They've been handling it fine so far.
  - evasb 3y ago
    They are handling "fine" because they only do low complexity changes. I remember that people asked, some years ago, to Brave team add add-ons in their Android reskin and they, after some time, rejected because they said that what Kiwi Browser were doing was too complex for them because it required too many patches. They were not even able to modify Mv3, they just said that they already added an adblock. Brave and Vivaldi are mere reskins, and they don't do anything more than Ungoogled Chromium do, but adding their own bloat.
    - dimitrios1 3y ago
      > but adding their own bloat. Brave runs faster and consumes less memory for me. Perhaps their additions aren't bloat at all?
    - rejectfinite 3y ago
      >Brave and Vivaldi are mere reskins, and they don't do anything more than Ungoogled Chromium do, but adding their own bloat. Brave has an excellent adblocker with Brave Shields built in and now just added vertical tabs native. Vivaldi has the best tab and window management in a browser by far, and even has an internal command line/launcher in pressing F2.
pipeline_peak 3y ago
It's pretty sad that the only way to ship a usable browser these days is by fork...
- rizky05 3y ago
  What do you think should be done ?
  - pipeline_peak 3y ago
    I'm stuck wondering what can be done. We've all seen FAANG companies go to court for breaches of users privacy. A browser engine monopoly doesn't seem to be something people care about. They don't know what an engine is, and can't see how one owner would be a problem. The problem is Google, being such a large company is far to powerful to compete with. Not to mention they own a lot of the products on the web that other engines need to be compatible with to be usable. What should be done is Google should be broken up so it's no longer one company leading this thing but I can't see that.
    - soundnote 3y ago
      A lot of people don't know what a browser is, or what the Internet is, per se. To them the Internet is the Google search bar on their phone.
      - pipeline_peak 3y ago
        > To them the Internet is the Google search bar on their phone That's just moving around terms. I think it's widely known that almost everyone knows all their devices are in some magical way connected to each other.
- omeid2 3y ago
  There is always an exception, Ladybird is one. https://lunduke.substack.com/p/ladybird-a-truly-new-web-browser https://lunduke.substack.com/p/ladybird-a-truly-new-web-brow...
evasb 3y ago
Most Chromium reskins are limited forks, they are always dependent on Google decisions and will always comply (Mv3). Brave and Vivaldi are exactly that, at least they could use Ungloogled Chromium codebase instead of repatching things.
- Alifatisk 3y ago
  I think Braves tweet just showed how they are not reskins and limited fork?
- freedomben 3y ago
  If you're going to reject OP's arguments for why they are a fork and not a reskin, you at least need to address some of their arguments.
WascallyWallaby 3y ago
Love everything about Brave except for Brendan Eich. For that reason and several others, I prefer Firefox.
- phone8675309 3y ago
  People here really love flagging comments about how much of a rabid homophobe he is.
yk 3y ago
How is Brave these days?
- J_Shelby_J 3y ago
  Great TBH. I use FF, chrome, and brave. They’re all good.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    > I use FF, chrome Stopped reading right here.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- soundnote 3y ago
  Great, depending on what you want. Native-ish Chrome, thoroughly degoogled, independent end to end encrypted sync, some nice extra features. Strong privacy features. If you want tons and tons of customization, it won't be your thing. Would recommend Vivaldi.
sundarurfriend 3y ago
I'm really grateful to Brave and Brave search for the alternatives they provide. Firefox is still my main browser, but Brave is an easy, reliable option when I come across a (thankfully increasingly rarer) website that refuses to work on Firefox (and happens to be an essential website in some way). I would use it a lot more if it was better about coping with low memory (4 GB) systems. This is possibly something they inherited from Chromium, but Brave is very memory hungry compared to Firefox, and is much quicker to slow down when there's 10+ tabs - Firefox on the same computer is able to cope much more easily with multiples of that. It's like using an old school Windows system, Brave has to be restarted periodically or it slows down dramatically, and starts responding erratically to UI interactions. I can have multiple Firefox profiles open, and a Librefox instance on the side too, and they all work fine; as soon as Brave is open, there's a tangible difference in the performance, of both the browser itself and the system as a whole.
- lern_too_spel 3y ago
  Brave Search is scummy. Try to configure robots.txt to block its crawler without blocking others. Brave won't let you.
mcpackieh 3y ago
Has Brave made their own "extension store" yet, or are they still piggybacking off Google's? This could be the way they set themselves apart; neither Google nor Mozilla do a good job of vetting extensions in their 'stores', both are packed with all manner of spyware. If brave made their own extension store and actually vetted extensions like Debian vets packages, they'd have a good argument for not being thought of as merely a chrome derivative.
- reneberlin 3y ago
  The link to the chrome extension store at the bottom of the extensions page is called "Find extensions and themes in webshop". Webshop is a hyperlink and leads to the official google chrome extension marketplace. I always wondered how they can call it a webshop and then it isn't even their own. I thought google would complain about that, but somehow doesn't. TBH i use brave or chromium with adblocker as my main browsers. On mobile i used Opera mini for years, it had a serverside precompression of media and overall was really the fastest browser i have ever used to render a webpage. I don't know why i ditched it and don't know if it's still the same. Back then i just found out they have so many different little Opera browsers for mobile, that i was confused a lot by that scheme. But the performance of that one with serverside rendering was brutal. Of course: a security nightmare.
- topspin 3y ago
  > Has Brave made their own "extension store" yet No. And I believe Brave is missing a huge opportunity here.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    I think if they don't eventually do this, their promise to maintain Manifest V2 extension support may become a moot point.
rejectfinite 3y ago
Good to hear. I like using Brave as a secondary browser and I also use it on phone and tablet as Firefox is slower on Android and Brave with aggressive shields blocks ads just as well as ublock on Firefox. Brave even blocks Twitch and Youtube ads for me without addons. Yes, I did have to spend time turning off the crypto stuff in it. But when tweaked it is an excellent browser.
- Given_47 3y ago
  > Yes, I did have to spend time turning off the crypto stuff in it. But when tweaked it is an excellent browser. Yea that’s the thing what browser is excellent out of the box? FF has telemetry on by default and shoves pocket down ur throat. It’s just a lame recycled take cuz like urself, no Brave supporter refutes the crypto bullshit
giancarlostoro 3y ago
I'm still surprised they did not just fork Firefox. Did they ever do a write up as to why they went with a Chromium codebase?
- rejectfinite 3y ago
  Gecko is harder to work with and slower. "just fork Firefox" lol Why did Opera, Microsoft, Vivaldi and Brave all base off Chromium if Gecko was so good? *I do use Firefox
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Pannoniae 3y ago
    On Firefox I can at least disable most of the isolated processes. I know it's not too secure but at the same time, I enjoy cutting memory usage by 3x, putting an end to the endless RAM consumption of my browser. (I have 32GB before someone says "just get more RAM" or "why do you use the internet with 4GB in 2023". But it still bothers me.) On Chromium I can't do that.
  - croes 3y ago
    Because Chrome is the new IE and websites are mostly tested against Chromium only. And MS uses Chromium because Google tampered with YouTube to hinder Edge. MS just gave up.
- slig 3y ago
  Do you know the founder's history? I'd that guess going with Chromium was a big F-you, besides the engine being faster and more modern, of course.
  - giancarlostoro 3y ago
    It's a bigger F-you to the browser marketshare keeping Chromium at way too much marketshare in the grand scheme of things. I have heard of his history, I would have invested in making a better Firefox fork had I been him.
EMM_386 3y ago
I switched to Brave last year after 22 years of Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox. This was purely for Chromium performance reasons (although it seems Firefox has made some major improvements recently). I didn't like leaving behind a unique browser engine, which needs to remain a significant player. I don't understand a lot of the hate for Brave. If you don't like the crypto integration, the ads, etc you can just disable them. I feel the original intent, to be able to contribute directly back to page authors, was a noble one. It may not have played out as intended, but it wasn't a scam. One year in, I've had no issues I can think of. And now they have their own search engine, another net plus to the ecosystem. Outside of things like Tor Browser, the privacy is about as good as you're going to get from a client. In fact, you can open a new window using Tor directly in the browser. I don't use their VPN but that's available also (Mullvad?). I spend enough daily time in it that I would notice UI/UX/perf. problems ... I really haven't seen any. YMMV
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I don't understand a lot of the hate for Brave. I certainly don't hate Brave. I use it. I also don't like Brave, I put up with it. It's just that there aren't any great browsers out there, and Brave sucks less than most.
  - BowBun 3y ago
    I agree with you, but it sometimes feels like a 'great browser' is supposed to be free, bleeding-edge while also backwards compatible, tracking-free, ad-free, and somehow altruistic and for the good of the open web. Where are we getting these absolutely unattainable ideals from? Who can possibly support and fund such a project besides an enterprise?
    - jollyllama 3y ago
      Can I get a decent bookmark manager and more than X months of history? What's so unattainable about that?
      - 3y ago
solarkraft 3y ago
Brave has issues. They may do some bad stuff. But they've doing something good here, let's appreciate that.
- i_play_stax 3y ago
  Bad stuff? Like what?
  - solarkraft 3y ago
    Most notably crypto currencies, injecting ads and taking donations in peoples' names without their approval or knowledge.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
thangngoc89 3y ago
Initially, I held the opinion that Apple's mandate regarding browsers on iOS/iPadOS, wherein they function as mere skins atop the Safari web viewer, constituted an anti-competitive measure. However, presently, it has emerged as one of the few non-Chromium browsers with a substantial user base, necessitating web developers to accommodate its requirements. As a fellow web developer, I find myself utilizing Safari for personal browsing while resorting to Chrome for development purposes due to far superior developer tools.
- pornel 3y ago
  It's good that Google has some non-marginal opposition, but in this case you don't gain computing freedom, you only only choose your master. Apple loves having tight control over their devices.
pcdoodle 3y ago
Brave is fantastic. Good on battery laptop too, there's a cool little feature to disable fancy stuff like smooth scrolling / fluid motion on battery or even a certain battery percentage.
pshirshov 3y ago
No tree style tabs is a total no go. Brave and Chrome do not support tst. I don't like BAT crap either. Re WEI. I'm afraid that many websites will start demanding it.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  > Brave and Chrome do not support tst. I don't know why Google didn't and doesn't prioritize it. I might have accidentally switched to chrome years ago if they had a TST-style plugin. TST fully recovered (eventually) after plugin ragnarok and Firefox's bad and opinionated UI, and can be made perfectly nice with CSS. For me it ranks as one of the best Japanese things. TST has 2/3 the number of installs that translation has.
- sundarurfriend 3y ago
  Recent versions of Brave apparently have a vertical tab bar, as many comments in this thread mention.
  - pshirshov 3y ago
    Vertical tab bar != tab tree
bityard 3y ago
My web browser journey: Netscape -> Mozilla -> Phoenix -> Firefox -> Vivaldi After being pretty happy with Firefox for a very long time, eventually I just got tired of them shuffling around the UI for no good reason, removing useful features, and doing absolutely nothing about letting users be in control of their privacy and security as they browse. I have a feeling that all of the motivated developers left Mozilla a long time ago and the ones that are left now are limping along in maintenance mode and just copying whatever Chrome does. Firefox lost its mojo years ago. Vivaldi is Chrome, of course, but about a million times more flexible and it actually comes with a bunch of privacy-preserving settings right out of the box. The only thing it lacks is an open code base, but the team behind Vivaldi seem to have enough respect for their users that it doesn't bother me as much as it might otherwise.
- BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
  > The only thing it lacks is an open code base, but the team behind Vivaldi seem to have enough respect for their users If it doesn't have an open codebase, how would you know?
- pessimizer 3y ago
  > the ones that are left now are limping along in maintenance mode and just copying whatever Chrome does. I think they're just padding out their resumes for the next job. If you aped a part of chrome into firefox, that probably gets you a leg up for working at google, or some company that has chrome integration.
  - AwaAwa 3y ago
    I'm depressed at how quickly I mentally agreed that this was just good sense on a Mozilla programmers part.
- soundnote 3y ago
  Vivaldi's configurability is amazing. Definitely recommended if you like toggles and checkboxes for damn near everything.
syncbehind 3y ago
I'm shocked at folks' willingness to use a browser that has a history of tampering with a user's URL input (among other shenanigans). See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027&p=2 for more. That's the bare minimum a browser is expected to do. Not touch my URLs.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  >See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027&p=2 for more. Did you read the comments?
- NayamAmarshe 3y ago
  A few things: - It was a URL auto-suggestion bug. - It was fixed in a day after release. - The PR is on GitHub, this isn't a closed source browser. - The bug appeared when Brave was like a few months old. - The URLs that were being overwritten were only a few crypto exchange websites that partnered with Brave. The affiliate URL was supposed to be a suggestion but the bug made it overwrite the URL. - The affiliate program was shutdown right after the PR was merged. - Nothing of that sort happened again. - Even the CEO apologized for an issue that was blown way out of proportions.
  - halJordan 3y ago
    Thats the joke, they changed the browser to harm the user and help the business. You and them have the gumption to act like wei isnt the same thing they've been shipping.
  - syncbehind 3y ago
    > The URLs that were being overwritten were only a few crypto exchange websites that partnered with Brave. The affiliate URL was supposed to be a suggestion but the bug made it overwrite the URL. I'm sure the outcry from folks who recognized this was happening did not have anything to do with the affiliate program being canned and this 'bug' being patched ASAP. It's quite an egregious thing for a browser to screw up. That kind of trust can't be bought back by saying "Nothing of that sort happened again", because now that statement is permanently "Nothing of that sort happened again...yet" because that trust is gone. If this issue wasn't "blown way out of proportions", one can only theorize how how long this bug would have stayed. The way I see it, the CEO apologizing is basically an apology that they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
saurik 3y ago
Brave is, at the end of the day, in the same boat as Google: they make money on ads. They also happen to be an ad blocker, so, of course, they won't implement WEI... but, as they also themselves present ads and need to make sure people don't block their ads while claiming to have seen them--which is trivial to do currently, btw--their product managers and even Brendan Eich himself had often laid out a roadmap that involves trusted computing technology with the same ad fraud justification Google is using, whether for their SDK or the browser itself. https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/bw6sek/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/bw6sek/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/b7rwbx/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/b7rwbx/ > 1/ native C++/Rust code, no JS tags on page that have zero integrity. That means ability to use SGX/TrustZone to check integrity and develop private user score from all sensor inputs in the enclave; ... > We already have to deal w/ fraud. That is inherent in any system with users and revenue shares or grants. We do it better via C++ and (under way) SGX or TrustZone integrity checking + OS sensor APIs, vs today’s antifraud scripts that are routinely fooled. > What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an antifraud system for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open source native code, which cannot be fooled by other JS on page; ... (1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile. https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9yys6b/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9yys6b/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/97trex/comment/e4axu6h/?context=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/97trex/comment/... > Part of the roadmap (details in update) is a BAT SDK. Obviously it would be open source, but more: we would require Secure Remote Attestation (Intel SGX broken but ARM TrustZone as used by Trustonic may be ok) to prove integrity of the SDK code in app.
- freediver 3y ago
  > Brave is, at the end of the day, in the same boat as Google: they make money on ads. And that should be the main distinction between browsers today - relience on ads for monetization has profound impact on incentives. There are browsers that are directly (or indirectly) ad-supported, and those which are not. The second group is very small though - how many browsers you can buy today?
  - soundnote 3y ago
bastardoperator 3y ago
Whatever it is, I don't need to earn crypto while browsing the web. I want to like brave, but it jumped the shark a long time ago.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Do you mean https://brave.com/wallet/ https://brave.com/wallet/? > The secure, built-in crypto wallet that supercharges your browser for Web3. It sounds like it's simply a wallet, not that I personally want that in a browser at least not yet, not "earning" (do you mean mining).
  - bastardoperator 3y ago
    Nope, I mean https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ I'm talking about getting paid in BAT coin for looking at ads they hijack on other peoples websites.
    - mminer237 3y ago
      > I'm talking about getting paid in BAT coin for looking at ads they hijack on other peoples websites. That's not how it works though. Brave blocks ads by default, but it doesn't insert ads on any websites. It has some separate ads you can enable to get paid, but they are either on the browser start page or in system notifications.
    - barbazoo 3y ago
      Ugh, ok, yeah, I have no interest in that either.
      - xNeil 3y ago
        I mean, it's optional. Don't remember what the default is, but you can opt out of their ads.
        Karunamon 3y ago
manchmalscott 3y ago
As long as it uses blink, it’s harmful to the open web.
PufPufPuf 3y ago
Yeah, there are many Chromium forks. Some of them without cryptocurrency and NFT crap, too!
gigel82 3y ago
I would highly recommend the Ungoogled Chromium fork instead: https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium Entirely volunteer maintained, there is no for-profit entity behind it looking to do crypto referrals or ad swapping or anything like that.
mythrwy 3y ago
I use Firefox, Chromium, Google Chrome and occasionally Brave on the same machine. Each has a special purpose. I stay logged into Google on Google Chrome and that is for Google auth and personal gmail. I don't search for anything outside the norm there. I develop using Chromium and use it for general purpose browsing, logged in to some sites. And I use Firefox for casual browsing, youtube, and never log in to much. Brave I mostly use on phone, occasionally Chrome. Is this unusual? I keep seeing people talking about "switching browsers" but I haven't seen the need to discard one to take up another.
npteljes 3y ago
Technically they are a fork, and I believe that they have some manpower to sustain it for a time. I don't believe that they have, or will ever have, the manpower or the know-how to for example rewrite critical parts of it. And so, they completely depend on Google open-sourcing the Chromium project. Should that project be abandoned AND the internet diverge from the current standards, they and other Chromium based projects would struggle to keep up, if even. So yes, the Brave project is much more than a reskin, or rebrand. They put way too much effort in for that. But the intent of the communication, that Brave absolutely depends on Google, is valid nevertheless.
kzhe 3y ago
Am opposed to brave due to their owner's donations, but they are a good product so this is good
- phone8675309 3y ago
  Better be careful, some around here don't want to hear about his homophobic history
  - i_play_stax 3y ago
    Personally, I don't care what the dude thinks or does. I care about the usefulness of the browser.
    - phone8675309 3y ago
      It's nice that you have that luxury in your life.
alexeiz 3y ago
I don't care if it's a reskin or not. Brave needs a killer feature. As of today it doesn't have any. But let's imagine it had guaranteed hardware video acceleration on Linux. I would switch to it in a heartbeat.
oldnet 3y ago
I used Brave for part-time whole year but I started to use Brave full-time a month ago. I completely uninstall Chrome because of auto updates. I tried to disallow auto update with most of tutorials on net but nothing worked. So I kicked Chrome.
anon7331 3y ago
How much can you trust a man that has spoken out against gay marriage and rights as much as Brendan Eich has?
- jacooper 3y ago
  What does that have to do with tech and his product and company? Also everything is open source you can see for yourself.
  - anon7331 3y ago
    Because I don't support people/companies/technology that go against basic human rights and you shouldn't either.
    - jacooper 3y ago
      I don't agree with that, and I don't to have to agree 100% with the values of a product I use, especially when free.
jasonvorhe 3y ago
Is there a privacy focussed Chrome fork out there that looks like Chrome? I love the UI and dislike the alternatives with their IMHO rather unpleasant theming.
- jacooper 3y ago
  Agree, haven't found anything and just got used to brave
  - jasonvorhe 3y ago
    Gave Brave another chance and after moving the tabs to the side, the UI is almost Chrome-like so I'm happy for now. :)

306 points by jacooper 3y ago

Huh, well I hate the twitter splash screen now, but at the same time, I too fall into the camp of "I do not use it as it is a Chrome reskin". Well, I mean, I do not like Chrome. I wonder if there is a list, not on twitter, about what precisely was removed instead of just a twitter blurb. Ops! <esc>:%s/twitter/x/g

madeofpalk 3y ago
The post links to https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
- dave_walko 3y ago
  lol, yea, first thing I saw and even after 2 years I am impressed. Brave has been my goto on my mac forever it seems. I have tried everything but Arc. I want to like safari but lack of extensions (that I use) kill it for me.
  - navanchauhan 3y ago
    Try Orion Browser, it uses the same WebKit engine as Safari but lets you install extensions from the Chrome Web Store (yes, uBlock Origin works) Orion also has an iOS version, and afaik they are also working on making a Windows version as well
    - frizlab 3y ago
      As much as I’d _love_ to see a windows version of Orion, I’m afraid we’re still far from it https://orionfeedback.org/d/2895-can-we-pleas-get-this-app-on-microsoft-windows-pleas/2 https://orionfeedback.org/d/2895-can-we-pleas-get-this-app-o...
      - dopidopHN 3y ago
        What’s wrong with Firefox ?
        troyvit 3y ago
        It's too fast (https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perfherder/graphs?timerange=31536000&series=mozilla-central,3735773,1,13&series=mozilla-central,3412459,1,13 https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perfherder/graphs?timerange=3...).
        frizlab 3y ago
        Nothing, I just like Orion.
    - miki123211 3y ago
      Like all other third-party browsers, Orion has no Keychain support, no auto-filling of 2FA codes, no support for Hide my Email / Private Relay, and no synchronization of Bookmarks/History with Launchbar and iCloud. Thanks but no thanks, I like my Safari.
      - freediver 3y ago
        Not sure where you got that but for the sake of facts: Orion has Keychain support. Orion has auto-filling 2FA codes. Orion has iCloud sync. If any one of those are not working as expected you should report it to orionfeedback.org Private relay is an Apple service that is not available to third party apps.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  Unless the tweet is adding more context, I'd request the github link be used instead. I don't have Twitter and the user experience is extremely limited when you aren't logged in.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I'd be ok with twitter links if the tweet being linked to was also quoted in the description. That would make it useful to those of us who don't go to twitter.
hooverd 3y ago
https://nitter.net/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304 https://nitter.net/BrendanEich/status/1684561924191842304
troyvit 3y ago
I can't tell you what was removed, but one recent addition is the word "Chrome" in the user agent string.[1] [1] https://explore.whatismybrowser.com/useragents/explore/software_name/brave/ https://explore.whatismybrowser.com/useragents/explore/softw...
- dharmab 3y ago
  There are good privacy reasons to use a Chrome-like user agent: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/-2JIRNMWJ7s/m/yHe4tQNLCgAJ?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/-2JIR...
- dev_daftly 3y ago
  User agent strings are all fake and should just be removed. Browsers modify them to game what servers send them, Microsoft had a great blog post about it when they released edge showing the difference in what it received based on user agent string changes.

baal80spam 3y ago

> We won’t be shipping WEI support, just as we disable or otherwise nullify lots of other junk that Google puts into Chromium. Most relevant part of the tweet. Go Brave!

worksonmine 3y ago
I never tried Brave, but they lost all credibility when they injected their own affiliate links in Coinbase URLs. I like that they use their own index in their search engine, but I will never use it, better alternatives exist and my trust is easy to lose and almost impossible to regain. So no, fuck Brave.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jrflowers 3y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. Here is a relevant link https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caught-adding-its-own-referral-codes-to-some-cryptcurrency-trading-sites/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caugh...
- mock-possum 3y ago
  only thing I use brave for is bypassing youtube ads on ios
  - JofArnold 3y ago
    You can do that with Vinegar Safari plugin combined with ad blockers

johnnymorgan 3y ago

I posted a reply about Brave and got shouted down about it being a clone but I was sure it was a fork. Thank you for the confirmation I've migrated my desktops to Brave a while ago, it's just mobile I've been lazy on..whelp here is the motivation haha

ncphil 3y ago

Totally personal preference, but not a fan of the Brave UI. At least from my perspective they (like Vivaldi and Edge) are trying too hard to distinguish themselves from the outward look and feel of Chromium. It's their right as a fork, and that of whoever finds it works for them. I'm not even bothered by (or much notice) the built-in crypto-based gamification. I just wish someone would do a minimalist fork of Chromium, maybe with a rudimentary sync service.

bragr 3y ago
The gamification is a pretty out of date hot take now. They still have that crypto stuff, but they pivoted about a year ago to try to sell the built in VPN and get more value out of their search engine to raise revenue instead.
- jacooper 3y ago
  And their search engine is actually pretty good
- baal80spam 3y ago
  The best part is that right click is all it takes to hide the VPN and other stuff from the UI. I usually do it first thing after I install Brave and never see it again.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  Honestly Firefox is way worse than brave in terms of intrusive stuff. When Firefox updates I get full screen ads for their VPN and whatnot. Brave has never done anything like that to me. Hide the features you don’t want once, never see them again.
  - Given_47 3y ago
    Yea I found there were a lot more FF config settings to disable as well. These threads always unfold the same way tho. Brave gets lambasted by some, the people that enjoy using Brave end up being “well actually” guys etc etc. And I use both Brave and FF in addition to occasional librewolf they’re all useful

kylec 3y ago

Glad it won't include Google's WEI, but it's not like it doesn't have it's own weird junk like BAT, so I guess pick your poison.

SkyMarshal 3y ago
You can use Brave and never even enable its crypto wallet. It’s an opt-in setting iirc.
- gochi 3y ago
  Opt in setting doesn't mean much here. While it's technically true the crypto stuff isn't "enabled", it's constantly pushed to you with no option to remove all of that during installation. I'll walk you through it: Upon loading the browser on a fresh install, you are greeted with a new tab page pushing Brave Rewards. With manipulative UX, there is no button to disagree or remove the feature, only a button for "start using rewards". You can hide it by clicking the 3 dots, which for most users they're never going to do unfortunately. Looking at the address bar, there's a triangle up there with a badge. Hiding the new tab Rewards card doesn't hide this triangle. Clicking on this does not show a remove feature option. Beside that, there's a sidebar button and a wallet icon again with a badge. Clicking on this only shows a learn more button. I can right click both of these, and finally see a hide option. Finally all of that is hidden. Maybe I browse a page or so, and then open a new tab. I'm shown an ad on the new tab screen. Right clicking it shows no hide button. So I'll try the customize button. Here's where you have to scroll down and disable the "show sponsored images" option. All done, right? Ok let's browse Reddit for a bit. There's where you see the "tip" button under every post. Right clicking shows nothing about hiding it. So into the settings you have to go to finally remove the last bit of the feature and be prompted to relaunch the browser.
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    > Ok let's browse Reddit for a bit. There's where you see the "tip" button under every post. Wait, that actually sounds like a great feature! Is there a way to get it for other browsers?

insanitybit 3y ago

Brave is really the browser to bet on and I wish people would give them more credit. Brave's position is that the web is broken - advertising is bad for the web as a single form of monetization. I really agree with that. They then ask the important question "so how do we envision the future of monetization?" and I guess that rubs people the wrong way but... it's a critical question, we can't just say "sorry, websites can't fund themselves", we need an alternative. I am about as anti-blockchain as they come, but the reality is that blockchain has one very specific use case - hostile, unauthenticated users, who need to prove that work has been done. That's the model of a website serving customers - you have no idea who they are, they could be trying to lie to you, etc. It's at least not a bad fit for the technology. At minimum they're trying something new and I think that's extremely worthwhile - it's not like their coin is their only asset, they are trying to actually sell value to customers. I believe Brave is far more mission aligned and practical than Mozilla is. They've already done a far better job around things like their VPN, TOR mode, etc.

elforce002 3y ago
100% agreed. I've been using it since 2021 and I can't complain. I switched to their search too and the experience is ok too. Shebangs and their integration with stackoverflow is getting better.
chomp 3y ago
"browser to bet on" is a broken way of looking at the web, and puts us right back where we are now. We need browser diversity, not a single point of failure. Brave, Mozilla, Safari, and the other non-Chromium based browsers are all fine picks in our current situation.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  I think Brave has the best opportunity to compete against Chrome, which turns the world from a 'one browser monopoly' to at least a world with two browsers. That is not "right back where we are now" at all. I don't really care at all about webkit or v8 being used everywhere nearly as much as I care about web standards and an organization having the power to push back or contribute to them. I don't think the benefits of having competing JS engines really warrant much effort relative to what I'm advocating for.

xnx 3y ago

A distinction without a difference. Brave changes some things and adds some of its own junk. Currently my trust of Google is much greater than my trust of Brave.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> Currently my trust of Google is much greater than my trust of Brave. What has Brave ever done that comes even close to trying to DRM the entire web?
isanjay 3y ago
Really? Or you meant the other way around ?
croes 3y ago
And what use is this trust to you? They gave you WEI.
ubertaco 3y ago
Meh, I don't really see it as an "either-or", but as a "neither". Do you trust: - Google, who's trying to DRM the web by building a majority-market-share browser engine and jamming their DRM into it, or - Brave, who takes that same Google browser engine, _supposedly_ strips "junk" out (but based on their own arbitrary selection criteria) while also adding crypto and rewriting links to add their own affiliate trackers? If you answered one of those two, I'd ask why. And if you said "because what other option is there", _then_ you'd finally be asking the right question.

K0nserv 3y ago

Fork or not, they obviously integrated almost everything from the upstream. Keeping a long-running fork that's increasingly diverging is not a simple task. Does Brave have the man-power to sustain their fork if it diverges sufficiently that they can no longer integrate upstream changes? EDIT: My broader point being, Brave's mission is less compatible with Google's and as such it's unfortunate they aren't basing Brave on Gecko. I know the whole history with Brendan Eich and Mozilla, as well as the problems with extending and embedding Gecko. Still, seems like an unfortunate outcome

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
soupbowl 3y ago
They've been handling it fine so far.
- evasb 3y ago
  They are handling "fine" because they only do low complexity changes. I remember that people asked, some years ago, to Brave team add add-ons in their Android reskin and they, after some time, rejected because they said that what Kiwi Browser were doing was too complex for them because it required too many patches. They were not even able to modify Mv3, they just said that they already added an adblock. Brave and Vivaldi are mere reskins, and they don't do anything more than Ungoogled Chromium do, but adding their own bloat.
  - dimitrios1 3y ago
    > but adding their own bloat. Brave runs faster and consumes less memory for me. Perhaps their additions aren't bloat at all?
  - rejectfinite 3y ago
    >Brave and Vivaldi are mere reskins, and they don't do anything more than Ungoogled Chromium do, but adding their own bloat. Brave has an excellent adblocker with Brave Shields built in and now just added vertical tabs native. Vivaldi has the best tab and window management in a browser by far, and even has an internal command line/launcher in pressing F2.

pipeline_peak 3y ago

It's pretty sad that the only way to ship a usable browser these days is by fork...

rizky05 3y ago
What do you think should be done ?
- pipeline_peak 3y ago
  I'm stuck wondering what can be done. We've all seen FAANG companies go to court for breaches of users privacy. A browser engine monopoly doesn't seem to be something people care about. They don't know what an engine is, and can't see how one owner would be a problem. The problem is Google, being such a large company is far to powerful to compete with. Not to mention they own a lot of the products on the web that other engines need to be compatible with to be usable. What should be done is Google should be broken up so it's no longer one company leading this thing but I can't see that.
  - soundnote 3y ago
    A lot of people don't know what a browser is, or what the Internet is, per se. To them the Internet is the Google search bar on their phone.
    - pipeline_peak 3y ago
      > To them the Internet is the Google search bar on their phone That's just moving around terms. I think it's widely known that almost everyone knows all their devices are in some magical way connected to each other.
omeid2 3y ago
There is always an exception, Ladybird is one. https://lunduke.substack.com/p/ladybird-a-truly-new-web-browser https://lunduke.substack.com/p/ladybird-a-truly-new-web-brow...

evasb 3y ago

Most Chromium reskins are limited forks, they are always dependent on Google decisions and will always comply (Mv3). Brave and Vivaldi are exactly that, at least they could use Ungloogled Chromium codebase instead of repatching things.

Alifatisk 3y ago
I think Braves tweet just showed how they are not reskins and limited fork?
freedomben 3y ago
If you're going to reject OP's arguments for why they are a fork and not a reskin, you at least need to address some of their arguments.

WascallyWallaby 3y ago

Love everything about Brave except for Brendan Eich. For that reason and several others, I prefer Firefox.

phone8675309 3y ago
People here really love flagging comments about how much of a rabid homophobe he is.

yk 3y ago

How is Brave these days?

J_Shelby_J 3y ago
Great TBH. I use FF, chrome, and brave. They’re all good.
- fsflover 3y ago
  > I use FF, chrome Stopped reading right here.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
soundnote 3y ago
Great, depending on what you want. Native-ish Chrome, thoroughly degoogled, independent end to end encrypted sync, some nice extra features. Strong privacy features. If you want tons and tons of customization, it won't be your thing. Would recommend Vivaldi.

sundarurfriend 3y ago

I'm really grateful to Brave and Brave search for the alternatives they provide. Firefox is still my main browser, but Brave is an easy, reliable option when I come across a (thankfully increasingly rarer) website that refuses to work on Firefox (and happens to be an essential website in some way). I would use it a lot more if it was better about coping with low memory (4 GB) systems. This is possibly something they inherited from Chromium, but Brave is very memory hungry compared to Firefox, and is much quicker to slow down when there's 10+ tabs - Firefox on the same computer is able to cope much more easily with multiples of that. It's like using an old school Windows system, Brave has to be restarted periodically or it slows down dramatically, and starts responding erratically to UI interactions. I can have multiple Firefox profiles open, and a Librefox instance on the side too, and they all work fine; as soon as Brave is open, there's a tangible difference in the performance, of both the browser itself and the system as a whole.

lern_too_spel 3y ago
Brave Search is scummy. Try to configure robots.txt to block its crawler without blocking others. Brave won't let you.

mcpackieh 3y ago

Has Brave made their own "extension store" yet, or are they still piggybacking off Google's? This could be the way they set themselves apart; neither Google nor Mozilla do a good job of vetting extensions in their 'stores', both are packed with all manner of spyware. If brave made their own extension store and actually vetted extensions like Debian vets packages, they'd have a good argument for not being thought of as merely a chrome derivative.

reneberlin 3y ago
The link to the chrome extension store at the bottom of the extensions page is called "Find extensions and themes in webshop". Webshop is a hyperlink and leads to the official google chrome extension marketplace. I always wondered how they can call it a webshop and then it isn't even their own. I thought google would complain about that, but somehow doesn't. TBH i use brave or chromium with adblocker as my main browsers. On mobile i used Opera mini for years, it had a serverside precompression of media and overall was really the fastest browser i have ever used to render a webpage. I don't know why i ditched it and don't know if it's still the same. Back then i just found out they have so many different little Opera browsers for mobile, that i was confused a lot by that scheme. But the performance of that one with serverside rendering was brutal. Of course: a security nightmare.
topspin 3y ago
> Has Brave made their own "extension store" yet No. And I believe Brave is missing a huge opportunity here.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  I think if they don't eventually do this, their promise to maintain Manifest V2 extension support may become a moot point.

rejectfinite 3y ago

Good to hear. I like using Brave as a secondary browser and I also use it on phone and tablet as Firefox is slower on Android and Brave with aggressive shields blocks ads just as well as ublock on Firefox. Brave even blocks Twitch and Youtube ads for me without addons. Yes, I did have to spend time turning off the crypto stuff in it. But when tweaked it is an excellent browser.

Given_47 3y ago
> Yes, I did have to spend time turning off the crypto stuff in it. But when tweaked it is an excellent browser. Yea that’s the thing what browser is excellent out of the box? FF has telemetry on by default and shoves pocket down ur throat. It’s just a lame recycled take cuz like urself, no Brave supporter refutes the crypto bullshit

giancarlostoro 3y ago

I'm still surprised they did not just fork Firefox. Did they ever do a write up as to why they went with a Chromium codebase?

rejectfinite 3y ago
Gecko is harder to work with and slower. "just fork Firefox" lol Why did Opera, Microsoft, Vivaldi and Brave all base off Chromium if Gecko was so good? *I do use Firefox
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Pannoniae 3y ago
  On Firefox I can at least disable most of the isolated processes. I know it's not too secure but at the same time, I enjoy cutting memory usage by 3x, putting an end to the endless RAM consumption of my browser. (I have 32GB before someone says "just get more RAM" or "why do you use the internet with 4GB in 2023". But it still bothers me.) On Chromium I can't do that.
- croes 3y ago
  Because Chrome is the new IE and websites are mostly tested against Chromium only. And MS uses Chromium because Google tampered with YouTube to hinder Edge. MS just gave up.
slig 3y ago
Do you know the founder's history? I'd that guess going with Chromium was a big F-you, besides the engine being faster and more modern, of course.
- giancarlostoro 3y ago
  It's a bigger F-you to the browser marketshare keeping Chromium at way too much marketshare in the grand scheme of things. I have heard of his history, I would have invested in making a better Firefox fork had I been him.

EMM_386 3y ago

I switched to Brave last year after 22 years of Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox. This was purely for Chromium performance reasons (although it seems Firefox has made some major improvements recently). I didn't like leaving behind a unique browser engine, which needs to remain a significant player. I don't understand a lot of the hate for Brave. If you don't like the crypto integration, the ads, etc you can just disable them. I feel the original intent, to be able to contribute directly back to page authors, was a noble one. It may not have played out as intended, but it wasn't a scam. One year in, I've had no issues I can think of. And now they have their own search engine, another net plus to the ecosystem. Outside of things like Tor Browser, the privacy is about as good as you're going to get from a client. In fact, you can open a new window using Tor directly in the browser. I don't use their VPN but that's available also (Mullvad?). I spend enough daily time in it that I would notice UI/UX/perf. problems ... I really haven't seen any. YMMV

JohnFen 3y ago
> I don't understand a lot of the hate for Brave. I certainly don't hate Brave. I use it. I also don't like Brave, I put up with it. It's just that there aren't any great browsers out there, and Brave sucks less than most.
- BowBun 3y ago
  I agree with you, but it sometimes feels like a 'great browser' is supposed to be free, bleeding-edge while also backwards compatible, tracking-free, ad-free, and somehow altruistic and for the good of the open web. Where are we getting these absolutely unattainable ideals from? Who can possibly support and fund such a project besides an enterprise?
  - jollyllama 3y ago
    Can I get a decent bookmark manager and more than X months of history? What's so unattainable about that?
    - 3y ago

solarkraft 3y ago

Brave has issues. They may do some bad stuff. But they've doing something good here, let's appreciate that.

i_play_stax 3y ago
Bad stuff? Like what?
- solarkraft 3y ago
  Most notably crypto currencies, injecting ads and taking donations in peoples' names without their approval or knowledge.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

thangngoc89 3y ago

Initially, I held the opinion that Apple's mandate regarding browsers on iOS/iPadOS, wherein they function as mere skins atop the Safari web viewer, constituted an anti-competitive measure. However, presently, it has emerged as one of the few non-Chromium browsers with a substantial user base, necessitating web developers to accommodate its requirements. As a fellow web developer, I find myself utilizing Safari for personal browsing while resorting to Chrome for development purposes due to far superior developer tools.

pornel 3y ago
It's good that Google has some non-marginal opposition, but in this case you don't gain computing freedom, you only only choose your master. Apple loves having tight control over their devices.

pcdoodle 3y ago

Brave is fantastic. Good on battery laptop too, there's a cool little feature to disable fancy stuff like smooth scrolling / fluid motion on battery or even a certain battery percentage.

pshirshov 3y ago

No tree style tabs is a total no go. Brave and Chrome do not support tst. I don't like BAT crap either. Re WEI. I'm afraid that many websites will start demanding it.

pessimizer 3y ago
> Brave and Chrome do not support tst. I don't know why Google didn't and doesn't prioritize it. I might have accidentally switched to chrome years ago if they had a TST-style plugin. TST fully recovered (eventually) after plugin ragnarok and Firefox's bad and opinionated UI, and can be made perfectly nice with CSS. For me it ranks as one of the best Japanese things. TST has 2/3 the number of installs that translation has.
sundarurfriend 3y ago
Recent versions of Brave apparently have a vertical tab bar, as many comments in this thread mention.
- pshirshov 3y ago
  Vertical tab bar != tab tree

bityard 3y ago

My web browser journey: Netscape -> Mozilla -> Phoenix -> Firefox -> Vivaldi After being pretty happy with Firefox for a very long time, eventually I just got tired of them shuffling around the UI for no good reason, removing useful features, and doing absolutely nothing about letting users be in control of their privacy and security as they browse. I have a feeling that all of the motivated developers left Mozilla a long time ago and the ones that are left now are limping along in maintenance mode and just copying whatever Chrome does. Firefox lost its mojo years ago. Vivaldi is Chrome, of course, but about a million times more flexible and it actually comes with a bunch of privacy-preserving settings right out of the box. The only thing it lacks is an open code base, but the team behind Vivaldi seem to have enough respect for their users that it doesn't bother me as much as it might otherwise.

BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
> The only thing it lacks is an open code base, but the team behind Vivaldi seem to have enough respect for their users If it doesn't have an open codebase, how would you know?
pessimizer 3y ago
> the ones that are left now are limping along in maintenance mode and just copying whatever Chrome does. I think they're just padding out their resumes for the next job. If you aped a part of chrome into firefox, that probably gets you a leg up for working at google, or some company that has chrome integration.
- AwaAwa 3y ago
  I'm depressed at how quickly I mentally agreed that this was just good sense on a Mozilla programmers part.
soundnote 3y ago
Vivaldi's configurability is amazing. Definitely recommended if you like toggles and checkboxes for damn near everything.

syncbehind 3y ago

I'm shocked at folks' willingness to use a browser that has a history of tampering with a user's URL input (among other shenanigans). See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027&p=2 for more. That's the bare minimum a browser is expected to do. Not touch my URLs.

constantcrying 3y ago
>See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027&p=2 for more. Did you read the comments?
NayamAmarshe 3y ago
A few things: - It was a URL auto-suggestion bug. - It was fixed in a day after release. - The PR is on GitHub, this isn't a closed source browser. - The bug appeared when Brave was like a few months old. - The URLs that were being overwritten were only a few crypto exchange websites that partnered with Brave. The affiliate URL was supposed to be a suggestion but the bug made it overwrite the URL. - The affiliate program was shutdown right after the PR was merged. - Nothing of that sort happened again. - Even the CEO apologized for an issue that was blown way out of proportions.
- halJordan 3y ago
  Thats the joke, they changed the browser to harm the user and help the business. You and them have the gumption to act like wei isnt the same thing they've been shipping.
- syncbehind 3y ago
  > The URLs that were being overwritten were only a few crypto exchange websites that partnered with Brave. The affiliate URL was supposed to be a suggestion but the bug made it overwrite the URL. I'm sure the outcry from folks who recognized this was happening did not have anything to do with the affiliate program being canned and this 'bug' being patched ASAP. It's quite an egregious thing for a browser to screw up. That kind of trust can't be bought back by saying "Nothing of that sort happened again", because now that statement is permanently "Nothing of that sort happened again...yet" because that trust is gone. If this issue wasn't "blown way out of proportions", one can only theorize how how long this bug would have stayed. The way I see it, the CEO apologizing is basically an apology that they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

saurik 3y ago

Brave is, at the end of the day, in the same boat as Google: they make money on ads. They also happen to be an ad blocker, so, of course, they won't implement WEI... but, as they also themselves present ads and need to make sure people don't block their ads while claiming to have seen them--which is trivial to do currently, btw--their product managers and even Brendan Eich himself had often laid out a roadmap that involves trusted computing technology with the same ad fraud justification Google is using, whether for their SDK or the browser itself. https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/bw6sek/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/bw6sek/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/b7rwbx/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/b7rwbx/ > 1/ native C++/Rust code, no JS tags on page that have zero integrity. That means ability to use SGX/TrustZone to check integrity and develop private user score from all sensor inputs in the enclave; ... > We already have to deal w/ fraud. That is inherent in any system with users and revenue shares or grants. We do it better via C++ and (under way) SGX or TrustZone integrity checking + OS sensor APIs, vs today’s antifraud scripts that are routinely fooled. > What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an antifraud system for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open source native code, which cannot be fooled by other JS on page; ... (1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile. https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9yys6b/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9yys6b/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/97trex/comment/e4axu6h/?context=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/97trex/comment/... > Part of the roadmap (details in update) is a BAT SDK. Obviously it would be open source, but more: we would require Secure Remote Attestation (Intel SGX broken but ARM TrustZone as used by Trustonic may be ok) to prove integrity of the SDK code in app.

freediver 3y ago
> Brave is, at the end of the day, in the same boat as Google: they make money on ads. And that should be the main distinction between browsers today - relience on ads for monetization has profound impact on incentives. There are browsers that are directly (or indirectly) ad-supported, and those which are not. The second group is very small though - how many browsers you can buy today?
- soundnote 3y ago

bastardoperator 3y ago

Whatever it is, I don't need to earn crypto while browsing the web. I want to like brave, but it jumped the shark a long time ago.

barbazoo 3y ago
Do you mean https://brave.com/wallet/ https://brave.com/wallet/? > The secure, built-in crypto wallet that supercharges your browser for Web3. It sounds like it's simply a wallet, not that I personally want that in a browser at least not yet, not "earning" (do you mean mining).
- bastardoperator 3y ago
  Nope, I mean https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ I'm talking about getting paid in BAT coin for looking at ads they hijack on other peoples websites.
  - mminer237 3y ago
    > I'm talking about getting paid in BAT coin for looking at ads they hijack on other peoples websites. That's not how it works though. Brave blocks ads by default, but it doesn't insert ads on any websites. It has some separate ads you can enable to get paid, but they are either on the browser start page or in system notifications.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    Ugh, ok, yeah, I have no interest in that either.
    - xNeil 3y ago
      I mean, it's optional. Don't remember what the default is, but you can opt out of their ads.
      - Karunamon 3y ago

manchmalscott 3y ago

As long as it uses blink, it’s harmful to the open web.

PufPufPuf 3y ago

Yeah, there are many Chromium forks. Some of them without cryptocurrency and NFT crap, too!

gigel82 3y ago

I would highly recommend the Ungoogled Chromium fork instead: https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium Entirely volunteer maintained, there is no for-profit entity behind it looking to do crypto referrals or ad swapping or anything like that.

mythrwy 3y ago

I use Firefox, Chromium, Google Chrome and occasionally Brave on the same machine. Each has a special purpose. I stay logged into Google on Google Chrome and that is for Google auth and personal gmail. I don't search for anything outside the norm there. I develop using Chromium and use it for general purpose browsing, logged in to some sites. And I use Firefox for casual browsing, youtube, and never log in to much. Brave I mostly use on phone, occasionally Chrome. Is this unusual? I keep seeing people talking about "switching browsers" but I haven't seen the need to discard one to take up another.

npteljes 3y ago

Technically they are a fork, and I believe that they have some manpower to sustain it for a time. I don't believe that they have, or will ever have, the manpower or the know-how to for example rewrite critical parts of it. And so, they completely depend on Google open-sourcing the Chromium project. Should that project be abandoned AND the internet diverge from the current standards, they and other Chromium based projects would struggle to keep up, if even. So yes, the Brave project is much more than a reskin, or rebrand. They put way too much effort in for that. But the intent of the communication, that Brave absolutely depends on Google, is valid nevertheless.

kzhe 3y ago

Am opposed to brave due to their owner's donations, but they are a good product so this is good

phone8675309 3y ago
Better be careful, some around here don't want to hear about his homophobic history
- i_play_stax 3y ago
  Personally, I don't care what the dude thinks or does. I care about the usefulness of the browser.
  - phone8675309 3y ago
    It's nice that you have that luxury in your life.

alexeiz 3y ago

I don't care if it's a reskin or not. Brave needs a killer feature. As of today it doesn't have any. But let's imagine it had guaranteed hardware video acceleration on Linux. I would switch to it in a heartbeat.

oldnet 3y ago

I used Brave for part-time whole year but I started to use Brave full-time a month ago. I completely uninstall Chrome because of auto updates. I tried to disallow auto update with most of tutorials on net but nothing worked. So I kicked Chrome.

anon7331 3y ago

How much can you trust a man that has spoken out against gay marriage and rights as much as Brendan Eich has?

jacooper 3y ago
What does that have to do with tech and his product and company? Also everything is open source you can see for yourself.
- anon7331 3y ago
  Because I don't support people/companies/technology that go against basic human rights and you shouldn't either.
  - jacooper 3y ago
    I don't agree with that, and I don't to have to agree 100% with the values of a product I use, especially when free.

jasonvorhe 3y ago

Is there a privacy focussed Chrome fork out there that looks like Chrome? I love the UI and dislike the alternatives with their IMHO rather unpleasant theming.

jacooper 3y ago
Agree, haven't found anything and just got used to brave
- jasonvorhe 3y ago
  Gave Brave another chance and after moving the tabs to the side, the UI is almost Chrome-like so I'm happy for now. :)