Mastodawn

Please, do not use Brave.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/5933715

Please, do not use Brave. - Divisions by zero

I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever. Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past [https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave] and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency [https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/brave-ico-35-million-30-seconds-brendan-eich/] which they then added to a rewards program [https://brave.com/brave-rewards/] that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave. After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes [https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/06/the-brave-web-browser-is-hijacking-links-and-inserting-affiliate-codes/] into URL’s. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators [https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/]. Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I’d say the answer is a very clear no. One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program [https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/8793], making (presumably) thousands of dollars off their users.

eya Oct 9, 2023

For the comments, can anyone give me an actual reason to use Brave over Firefox (and it’s forks)? I guess the cryptocurrency aspect is a reason, but I wouldn’t say it’s a very good one.

stifle867 Oct 9, 2023

That’s actually one of the reasons I do not use Brave.

rtxn Oct 9, 2023

The thisisunsafe bypass - although I’m pretty sure it’s a Chromium feature and not specific to Brave. One of our servers has a completely fucked-up SSL cert, which I can’t fix for reasons outside my control. Firefox won’t allow me to connect, but thisisunsafe on Brave works.

Swyper Oct 9, 2023

It works in Chromium too.

TigrisMorte Oct 9, 2023

I have no problem using firefox with my self signed cert. Just add the cert.

rtxn Oct 10, 2023

It’s not self-signed. I think we used to have a proper internal CA, but it’s gone along with its certs. And we can’t replace it because that particular server is held together by our desperate friday night prayers.

Matomo Oct 9, 2023

My guess is because Brave is a relatively known Chromium browser that’s been degoogled. Along with built in ad and tracker blocking, and it’s an easy less evil of the two.

I want to like Firefox, both as normal user and as web developer, but something about it keeps bugging me. The UI feels sluggish, sites seem to be slightly less performant, and I can’t seem to get used to it.

That said, I’ve started using Vivaldi, and while it can be considered bloated, I really like the tab options it has, while also offering a degoogled chromium that’s being kept to date.

Rocha Oct 9, 2023

I want to like Firefox, both as normal user and as web developer, but something about it keeps bugging me. The UI feels sluggish, sites seem to be slightly less performant, and I can’t seem to get used to it.

I feel the exact same. I use linux with a tiling window manager and when I change format, Firefox just starts twitching like it’s trying to give me an epileptic seizure while chromium browsers do it just fine.

Also, sometime ago I tried to compare Chrome (when I still used it) and Firefox side by side with the same extensions opening the same websites and Firefox always took a bit more ram.

hddsx Oct 9, 2023

You sure that’s not a WM problem?

FWIW, Ubuntu 20.04, i3wm, no problems with Firefox

Rocha Oct 9, 2023

Idk, I use gnome with pop shell tiling and Firefox is the only program that does it.

hddsx Oct 9, 2023

Try another WM and see if you still have issues

seaQueue Oct 9, 2023

Try basic Chromium, it’s Chrome without the Google.

You’re not wrong about Firefox, many sites are specifically optimized for Chrome and perform worse in FF. This is especially true for anything Google.

My machines are generally fast enough that FF is fine so I prefer it but I fall back to Chromium occasionally or Chrome and Edge for specific uses.

There’s nothing in particular wrong with Vivaldi, IIRC I didn’t like some features or UI bits when I used it last so it didn’t have anything to recommend itself to me over basic Chromium. I’d prefer it over Edge which, IMO, is bloated with a bunch of garbage but Edge has very good streaming site support so 🤷‍♂️

kadu Oct 9, 2023

and as a web developer

If you’re already techy, why simply not install degoogled Chromium and two or three extensions? Why bother with pre-packaged versions of the browser that will inevitably mean: waiting before upstream improvements reach your version, depending on the quality and exceptions made by the built in blocker, trying to argue the added data collection is worth it, and so on.

Just grab Chromium, add uBlock origin, your favorite private DNS and that’s it.

AtHeartEngineer Oct 9, 2023

Every update takes forever to compile

grue Oct 9, 2023

why simply not install degoogled Chromium

Because it contributes to Google’s hegemony over web standards, and that’s bad for the Internet.

kadu Oct 9, 2023

We are way past the point individual action would ever make Chromium not the default web standard.

IronKrill Oct 10, 2023

I don’t see how it contributes any more than installing the Chromium-based Brave or Vivaldi, which are the comparisons being made in this specific thread.

borZ0 the t1r3D b3aR Oct 9, 2023

Vivaldi tab management is pretty great. Vivaldi is designed for power users that always have a ton of tabs open. There are a bunch of other features as well that I use regularly, but I could see that it might be a bit of a learning curve for those that just want to install a browser and immediately know where everything is. There has been more than a few times that I discovered yet another efficiency using Vivaldi and felt like I was getting more from it. Definitely a browser for someone willing to spend time configuring it for their use case. Keyboard shortcuts ftw!

Matomo Oct 10, 2023

Vivaldi definitely has a learning curve. It’s great once you have it set up how you like (which, granted, is way too time consuming for the average user). But the tab stacking and tiling is so immensely useful for me, I can’t use other browsers without missing those features now.

AlexWIWA Oct 9, 2023

Because all the web devs optimize for chrome because they dominate the market. If more people use Firefox then devs will start to care about performance in it

ᴅᴜᴋᴇᴛʜᴏʀɪᴏɴ Oct 9, 2023

You’re going to have to convince MILLIONS of people to even scratch the surface of “making a difference” or even being noticed.

ᴅᴜᴋᴇᴛʜᴏʀɪᴏɴ Oct 9, 2023

Tomorrow morning, Google could decide to program google.com to no longer work with any gecko browser. Firefox will be dead by the afternoon, no matter how many antitrust/monopoly lawsuits get filed.

AlexWIWA Oct 10, 2023

Not really. I’ve gotten plenty of bugs fixed on other sites by just sending them a screenshot of something going wrong in Firefox. For the big companies like Facebook though you’re entirely correct

ᴅᴜᴋᴇᴛʜᴏʀɪᴏɴ Oct 10, 2023

At what point will even the smaller companies stop providing that support, and how do we as a community combat the eventual end of it?

eya Oct 10, 2023

We combat the eventual end of it by getting more people to use it. The more people using it the more support it gets.

eya Oct 10, 2023

It’s the same as someone not voting because they are only one person. Sure, you’re only one person, but when millions of people have that exact same thought it makes a difference.

AlexWIWA Oct 10, 2023

I guess we complain as loud and as often as we can. And give our money to companies that support Firefox. Thankfully most of my coworkers, at every company I’ve worked at, use Firefox use Firefox so the website usually works because they needed it to to do their job

raubarno Oct 10, 2023

Add a user agent checker to your website and add tag: ‘Your browser, Google Chrome, is not supported. Please open this website on Firefox.’

Thic could attract masses.

Matomo Oct 10, 2023

I’m not sure what it is. I suppose this is the case for the heavier web-applications, but the average website (which is where my expertise is, not actual applications) also feels slightly worse on FF. And as far as I know, I don’t use any chrome-specific tricks or optimizations.

ArbiterXero Oct 9, 2023

The problem is that so many site hyper-optimize for chrome. Add that to Google helping create web frameworks that seem to almost intentionally break Firefox and you get a de facto standard on chrome because ANYTHING else seems broken.

Long live FF

ѕєχυαℓ ρσℓутσρє Oct 9, 2023

I’m in the exact same position as you. I recently switched from Vivaldi to Cromite and it’s been pretty smooth. It’s degoogled, has ad-blocking etc. and it’s FOSS. Might wanna give it a try.

emax_gomax Oct 9, 2023

Pretty much the only reason I use brave. 99% of the time librewolf. I don’t wanna go through the effort of installing chromium and an ad blocker and all that other stuff for the 1% of sites that are broken on firefox for me so brave it is. Really I just wish there was a chrome repackage with all this stuff out of the box. God knows chrome and chromium will never be that.

spitfire Oct 13, 2023

For me, Vivaldi had had the best performance next to Safari. FF and Chrome are easily smoked by Vivaldi when benchmarking. Idk if it’s related to M-series chipset or what, but my buddy who doesn’t have one has much worse performance on his laptop. Also, web and software dev, the saved workspaces that you can pin is killer.

Maoo [none/use name]Oct 9, 2023

Brave has been hyped as a privacy browser despite having several major privacy failures baked into it repeatedly. It’s 100% hype. You get the same level of privacy on paper by installing Chromium with an ad blocker and tweaking a couple settings. Firefox has better privacy defaults and is better with an ad blocker installed. Chromium has a slight edge on security (FF needs to really push tab isolation harder) but if privacy is your main concern I would always recommend FF.

OsrsNeedsF2P Oct 9, 2023

Brave is better out of the box than Firefox

eya Oct 9, 2023

Not by much…

WalrusDragonOnABike Oct 9, 2023

The only reason I use it over firefox is about tab grouping and how tab mutting work by default. I don't feel like trying out a bunch of extensions to find one that does what I already get from another browser. Also don't have to worry about installing ad blocker. Originally switched because it worked better than uorigin for a specific use-case that was relevant for me. I also have vivaldi, firefox, and librewolf install and will use them occasionally. Privacy isn't a big concern for me though; when I tried to switch to librewolf, the privacy features ended up annoying me so I disabled a lot of them because they interfered with using the browser how I wanted.

_cnt0 Oct 9, 2023

Being chromium based it

has better performance
has less bugs
has better standards compatibility

Don’t get me wrong, I am using Firefox, but your entire post is pretty disingenuous. Criticizing Brave over privacy concerns and then suggesting Firefox instead requires disingenuity or a special kind of ignorance and/or stupidity. Firefox has had 10 times as many privacy “mishaps” as Brave with all the “experiments” of corporate affiliates they shipped to users unannounced. There’s a reason there are so many forks of Firefox.

Pretty much everything you criticize about Brave is entirely optional.

Then you title a link as Brave “getting ousted as spyware”, and the linked to page does not oust Brave as spyware at all. You would do good to adopt some of the more neutral/factual tone of that page.

And in parts that page is pretty ridiculous, too: complaining about what is set as the default search engine (the same as Firefox, btw). Who the fuck cares what search engine is set by default? Just change it. Opt out of everything you do not like. If there’s stuff you cannot opt out of which is bad, we can talk about that. But arguing about optional features is ridiculous.

eya Oct 9, 2023

I stated “and it’s forks” in the comment, and I did not mention Firefox (or any other browser) in the actual main post itself. Firefox can be easily de-spyware’d with something like arkenfox’s user.js (as I mentioned in another comment). There are also plenty of privacy-centric Chromium based browsers such as Ungoogled Chromium and Vivaldi.

Regarding optional features, I more used them as a segue into the last three links showcasing Brave’s malicious and downright illegal activities. Personally, the fact those features are integrated into the browser at all is a deal breaker for me.

_cnt0 Oct 9, 2023

Funny how you do not address most of what I said … so, disingenuous it is.

Regarding optional features, I more used them as a segue red herring into the last three links

ftfy

Nothing good will come of this conversation, so I’ll stop it right here. Have a nice day.

eya Oct 9, 2023

Funny how you do not address most of what I said … so, disingenuous it is.

I don’t address most of what you said because it’s referring to one of the six links I have in that post, and I don’t really have anything to say regarding it.

I don’t see how it is misleading to tell people that Brave created a cryptocurrency, they then added a rewards program to the browser with that cryptocurrency, and then they inserted affiliate links into URL’s when people were browsing. All of this happened, it’s not misleading, it’s just a fact.

TigrisMorte Oct 9, 2023

None of those three are true.
Some web sites are optimized for chrome.
Not remotely accurate, https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list
Not to any relevant degree. 515 VS 528 is at best a slight difference that in all likely hood is from Googlie using their position to strong arm things that benefit only them into the standards and very likely undetectable by the end user. https://html5test.com/

Monorail - chromium - An open-source project to help move the web forward. - Monorail

chevy9294 Oct 9, 2023

I have installed Brave on my grandparents’ computer, because:

They had only used chrome, so brave is more familiar than firefox.

Less chance of something not working/loading properly.

Personally I use firefox.

grue Oct 9, 2023

I wouldn’t touch Brave with a ten-foot pole, but I heard that it’s configured for privacy by default, whereas Firefox requires extensions like uBlock Origin etc. So maybe Brave is better for idiots, I guess?

eya Oct 9, 2023

Brave is slightly better than default Firefox. But there are plenty of forks of Firefox that are way better than it out of the box.

grue Oct 9, 2023

Being lazy, I wish some of those forks were available in my distro’s apt repo.

RT Redréovič Oct 9, 2023

Due to some specific hardware issue on my end affecting all firefox based browsers, I have to use a hardened and stripped down version of Flatpak Brave, which I did manually, as a backup browser. I used to use Ungoogled Chromium but it is not reliable. Other than that there is absolutely no reason to use Brave and I would immediately switch back to Firefox only if I get newer hardware.

As a plus point, firefox (gecko based browsers in general) are the only ones I have seen which provide the best theming flexibilities.

eya Oct 9, 2023

Have you tried any forks of Firefox? They might serve you better. You could also try out Mullvad’s browser, which released a few months ago.

RT Redréovič Oct 10, 2023

I have tried a wide number of Firefox Forks, some niche ones as well. I generally do not prefer non-ESR releases or Forks because of the added Fingerprinting Risks. But all of them had the same issue so I concluded that there was some incompatibility with my Hardware (which is quite old now) and the Gecko Engine.

Firipu Oct 9, 2023

I don’t use brave, but I use Vivaldi.

The main reason for me is native mouse gestures. They are so much better than addon mouse gestures.

And speed dials. Addon ones are okayish, but I prefer the Vivaldi implementation.

If Firefox would ever ass native mouse gestures, I would swap in an instant. Until then, no can do :(

eya Oct 9, 2023

Personally I can’t say anything about Vivaldi, but it’s proprietary and owned by people who used to work for Opera.

Firipu Oct 10, 2023

Proprietary, yes, from a Foss pov it’s not good I guess
Owned by ex opera ppl: that’s a good thing tbh. Old opera was fantastic. New opera is more fishy after they were acquired by a Chinese group.

There is a lot of browser love in Vivaldi tbh. They are very open and transparent. Haven’t found a single red flag about Vivaldi (aside from not being FOSS, which for me isn’t a red flag per se)

They even run their own Mastodon servers for their community ;)

eya Oct 10, 2023

Proprietary software is generally frowned upon in this community, however I personally don’t mind that much.

𝕊𝕞𝕒𝕔𝕜𝕖𝕞 𝕎𝕚𝕥𝕥𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕔 Oct 10, 2023

I love the Vivaldi community. It might not be AS open as the Firefox community but the devs seem quite nice and are very responsive to feedback

Overboard8171 Oct 9, 2023

Defaults. Install Brave and you’re done. Site doesn’t work? Report non-working site. Wanna support creators? Top up your Brave Wallet or turn on Brave ads.

I’ve a limited budget and limited time to tip websites. I ain’t gonna tip manually every other rando on the internet. Brave takes care of that. Small amounts, yes, but better than just ad-blocking [yes, website owners have to opt-in to it].

Completely uninformed take follows: Also, Mozilla seems to be trying to ramp up their ads department – search for Mozilla Ads. And no-one gonna convert because they already have Google Adsense.

TL;DR: Firefox is faster but using recommended tools like uBlock Origin leaves websites without income.

eya Oct 9, 2023

You can always use something like AdNauseam to give website owners ad revenue and still block ads.

AdNauseam - Clicking Ads So You Don't Have To

A browser extension that clicks on every blocked ad to fight advertising surveillance.

heavyboots Oct 10, 2023

My number one reason would be we need to stop using solely chromium browsers before we end up in another IE era where websites only bother coding for chromium support. FWIW Firefox is pretty great these days anyway so it’s not like it’s even a painful decision.

eya Oct 10, 2023

I mean that’s a reason not to use Brave. It’s a Chromium based browser.

heavyboots Oct 10, 2023

Yeah I reread your question after I posted and realized you were asking something different. Tried to delete it before anyone read it but oops… 😬

Gogo Sempai Oct 10, 2023

On iOS, unlike Android, Firefox doesn’t come with extensions. No ads are blocked. Even if I use Safari and Adguard extension, it doesn’t block YouTube ads. Brave works like a charm in this regard. I’ve opted out of all telemetry stuff that I could find, and btw even Firefox opts into everything by default. Any other open source browser you can suggest that blocks ads including YouTube on iOS?