Brave is essentially just Chrome with an adblocker, a bunch of bloatware, and a bunch of controversies.
Brave took BAT donations in YouTuber’s names without their consent, with them keeping the money if the YouTubers didn’t claim it. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/
Brave’s search engine crawler hides itself from websites by pretending to be Googlebot, and Meta (Facebook) buys API access from them to train their AI. https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/
The business model of Brave rewards as a whole is to block all other ad networks to replace them with their own, which is unfair as only YouTubers and websites that have joined can make money from most Brave users.
If Brave actually cared, they would create an acceptable ads style feature which was free for everyone and allowed simple contextual banners while blocking ads which track you, take up most of the page, or have NSFW content.
Their approach is monopolistic as they have full control and can strangle YouTubers and websites by dropping pay at any time.
And Brenden Eich has said on Twitter that he plans to release “Brave Origin”, which is a paid version of Brave without the bloatware. That name is ironic as he is admitting that his browser is commercialised and bloated, which is similar to when gorhill gave uBlock way to Chris Aljoudi who commercialised it, which led him to create uBlock Origin.
If you use Brave, ditch it and look at using Librewolf or Helium instead, which both include no ads nor tracking and don’t have Brave News, Rewards, Wallet, Talk etc bloatware.
I always use and recommend hardened Firefox + Ublock. As a search engine, I use Qwant, which is based in the EU and uses its own search engine whenever possible rather than Google, Bing, etc. And there is another reason not to recommend using Brave. Among its investors is Peter Thiel, the most controversial figure in the investment world. Search for Peter Thiel’s controversial statements in your favourite search engine and you will see for yourself.
Consider a SearXNG instance. It can use Quant as a source, but balance across other engines to get the best results based on overlap (you choose the engines).
searxng is awesome.
Only thing is that instances go down from time and it gets frustrating. I am not geeky enough to host an instance myself. So I just keep hoping one instance to another which is also not very convenient. How do I make most of searx?
Yea, running your own is definately the way to go. If you have Docker installed, you can run it on your local machine?
docker pull docker.io/searxng/searxng:latest docker run -ti --rm --name searxng -p 8888:8080 -v "./searxng/config/:/etc/searxng/" -v "./searxng/data/:/var/cache/searxng/" docker.io/searxng/searxng:latestThat would run at http://localhost:8080/ and store all data and config persistent, and download the latest version (if needed) every time.
And if you’re concerned about the way Mozilla is headed, there are multiple open source versions like waterfox that should work with all extensions.
I posted this a year or two ago and got hit by a huge wave of furious Brave users lol. Occasionally to this day someone will stumble on it and post some tirade
it’s a shame because there’s legitimately good technology for blocking advertising in Brave, there’s just so much else that is questionable/indefensible
I’m quite happy with the Mullvad browser.
mullvad also has encrypted dns that anyone (don’t need to be a vpn subscriber) can plug-in to their browser or (compatible) operating system–including optional domain-level blocking (adult, social, gambling, and ads). yes, you can use a basic ‘pihole-like’ dns without needing to actually set one up.
Don’t forget that they used to add referral parameters to links you clicked so they got a kickback from you clicking things from anywhere even if they didn’t make that link for you.
Desktop = Librewolf, Mullvad and hardened firefox browsers. Strictly separating uses. Mobile (Android) = Cromite, Brave, Firefox and Tor. Again, separating uses.
I dislike any browser which blocks content (such as ads) by default. It may sound silly, but Imo, that’s not what a browser should be doing. It’s job is to act as an HTTP client, render HTML and do caching, storage and all the management which goes with it and offer any tools to tinker with it.
The meaning of the content displayed should be of no concern to the browser as it is subjective.
I will install an addon to deal with unwanted content as I see fit. Firefox is getting kinda bloated with all the things which come with it (pocket, accounts, default bookmarks…), but I can live with that.What if we start from the premise of a browser being judged by its most popular use case?
I’m happy to change some default settings to customize for my use case, knowing that most users that don’t know/care about such things are getting ads blocked by default (let’s be honest, I like crawling through settings each time I install new software regardless :P )
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I won’t use a chromium based browser at all, especially Brave.
I use Firefox/LibreWolf as my primary browser, but for things that don’t work with Gecko or for PWAs, I use Brave.
Is WebKit still a thing outside MacOS/iOS? I know it’s roots are tied to KDE but I haven’t seen much in ages
I’m just glad people are finally starting to mention LibreWolf as the first go-to.
Do people realize that if Firefox dies (in the many ways that could be interpreted), all of these downstream forks will also die right?
Like, the work to in essence remove unwanted parts of a code base is admirable but its an utterly miniscule fraction of the work that goes into maintaining a modern browser, keeping up with standards, sending people to be voices at conventions, etc.
The beauty of open source projects is that if they are abandoned, other people can pick them back up. Sure it may be difficult, but if it wasn’t FOSS it wouldn’t even be possible.
Thats the beauty to silly idealists who pretend they can’t understand that hundreds of employees getting paid full time wont materialize out of thin air to keep a massive project like a web browser alive in the absence of that structure.
To those asking “which browser other than Firefox”
It’s fantastic. It’s Chrome, stripped of junk, with full (not lite) Ublock Origin natively supported and shipped. What more could you want?
And it can coexist alongside Firefox.
Cromite is also great, but its antifingerprinting is so hardcore it breaks some sites. That’s perfect for shopping/private browsing, but a bit much for daily driving unless tracking resistance is your #1 priority.
On iOS and OSX, Orion (from Kagi) is sublime. It’s Safari based (which you want for Apple stuff), but heavily modified with a native blocker, and supports extensions if you really need them. There aren’t many Safari “forks” like it.
I say this because I’ve been through a gauntlet of trying a bunch. Bromite, ungoogled chromium, waterfox, pale moon, Thorium, Vivaldi, all sorts of iOS apps and Firefox/Chromium forks. And these feel like endgame to me. Helium is just about perfect (as long as its development isn’t dropped), and Orion is close aside from some UI quirks.
Thank you for the recommendation, I will try out helium
If you used Ungoogled Chromium why did you switch and recommend Helium? Can’t you achieve Helium settings and tweaks on Ungoogled Chromium? Why add an additional party to potentially delay security updates?
Ungoogled Chromium does not support full uBlock Origin. Last I checked, it wont auto-update itself on Windows without a 3rd party tool, and I remember it having some other “quirks” from the stuff it strips out. The delay for security updates seems pretty minimal, too.
And personally, I like the bangs feature, now that I’m using Orion on iOS anyway.
But its based on ungoogled-chromium, so if you prefer to use upstream, that makes a lot of sense. Helium’s main pitch seems to be an “easier to install” ungoogled chromium anyway.
I think librewolf seems like the only fair option
If it’s viable for you, slightly modified Mulvad browser + Searxing for search.
Mullvad browser is a variant of the Tor browser, but rather than being used to connect to Tor, it’s built on the stripped away version of Firefox that Tor builds. This means no ‘phoning home’ telemetry to Mozilla or Google. The only default connection Mullvad browser uses – and this might be why I would suggest modifying it – is the DNS gets routed through Mullvad. Nothing wrong with that, as they have some solid adblocking DNS servers. But: having a choice for that is good. The default should not be assumed.
Searxing uses a number of search indexes that have been consistently effective when compared to commercial search engines, and it’s open source and deployable on, say, a home server. There used to be some public instances available. Searxing is good.
Were setting up a Searxing service for yourself somewhere not as viable, and you want to try a service that you pay for (rather than them using your data as ‘payment’), I would recommend something like Kagi. They offer an interesting feature to their service, and this is why I suggest them: they have a privacy tokenized search, which valdidates but obsfucates you as a user when you make a search request. I think it is smartly engineered, and I can appreciate it for what it is.
For privacy and security purposes, alike, I would avoid Zen and Floorp. They do not get security updates as often.
it did not take long for the Brave browser to go from hero to villain-status.
Agree except that having your web crawler hiding itself by pretending to be Googlebot is bad. Preferable to Google search monopoly. For search, Brave is not actually a terrible option (but I won’t touch the browser with a 3 metre pole)
