I only use brave at work because it somehow bypasses the firewall there and I can install and use it. I run it to watch videos about cooking or traveling and reading news when I have nothing to do at my job.
At home I usually run tor browser (tbb) and firefox with addons to block ads and tracking.
I’m not sure I should turn to brave as default browser. How do you see it?
what’s your experience with brave like?
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Functionally, read this guide here: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers
Philosophically, Brave does a lot of shady user tracking and crypto shit of their own, and I choose not to use it for that reason. Better than Chrome. Worse than Firefox. In my opinion.
The one founded by the guy who got fired from Mozilla for supporting hate groups?
The one that integrates support for NFTs, the stupidest form of cryptocurrency scam?
That browser?
Apparently they sell user data to train AI models… search for “brave controversy”
Apparently you need to follow your own advice and do a search because it takes 30 seconds to see they are collecting data from their search engine not the browser. So if you don’t use their search (which is pretty shit anyway) it’s not relevant to the browser side of things. The browser is completely open source and everyone can see what the code is doing.
And isn’t using search data to improve search results a pretty reasonable usecase for AI? Seems like a nothing burger. For the record I use librewolf but I find the constant Brave hate to be undeserved.
https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409406835469-What-is-the-Web-Discovery-Project-
If you opt in, you’ll contribute some anonymous data about searches and web page visits made within the Brave Browser (including pages arrived at via some, but not all, other search engines). This data helps build the Brave Search independent index, and ensure we show results relevant to your search queries. By “data” we mean search queries, search result clicks, the URLs of pages visited in the browser, time spent on those pages, and some metadata about the pages themselves.
My emphasis.
So just don’t opt in then? They’re not selling the data, it’s completely optional, and they explain exactly what they’re collecting, how they’re collecting it, and what they’re using it for. This is all completely reasonable. They have to get this information for to improve the search somehow. Even the actual collection component is open source. I’m not sure what the issue is.
My reply was purely to get to the accurate information versus your reply which says that they are “collecting data from their search engine not the browser” as it’s important that people reading know what’s actually going on.
I’m not here to argue about whether they should or should not do that and I’m not going to (and when I used Brave I consciously went into the menu to opt into this to improve their search engine so we could have a competitor).
Ahh yeah I actually remember that now that you mention it, I used to be a heavy brave user since then I’ve moved to ARC, is pretty cool also built on top of chromium just like brave.
Used it for a while years ago, hated all the crypto stuff it tried to push but could still ignore most of it. Then saw the CEO sharing antivax propaganda and decided to try different options, ended up finding much browser options out there. These days I’m running Vivaldi. I think I would only put brave ahead of chrome itself now.
It’s shady AF. Anything with that much crypto bs baked in shouldn’t be trusted.
Why?
My biggest problem with Brave is it installs VPN Services without without telling you. Here’s a Brave developer talking about it on the Brave subreddit.
If you need a Chromium browser. Just use ungoogled-chromium, Windows version. If you just need a browser use Firefox.
In OP’s case it sounds like the VPN service is the whole reason they’re using it. Not that I would recommend it, as their corporate IT likely has a policy against exactly this sort of thing
I just discovered this on a relative’s computer. Any trick to removing the VPN service?
The VPN services are installed but do not run unless/until you activate Brave VPN. This is such a non-issue.
At work I use firefox, but to be fair we don’t have any firewall or restrictions. Home I use librewolf for privacy reasons.
Crypto scam scum
All evidence points to it being a very technically sound browser but with a terrible leadership. I used to use Brave but have since switched back to Vanadium.
Brave do shady stuff to get money like change your URL to include a referral code for them, that’s not ethical as the “AI training models” they do with their search engine, I don’t trust them. All what you get with Brave you can do the same with Firefox. If you want to browse Tor on Firefox I recommend you using Firefox containers + https://github.com/bekh6ex/firefox-container-proxy and one container names Tor and proxy it to your Tor socket (should be localhost:9050) and done.
If you so much as mention a browser on reddit you’ll get 5 replies telling you to try Brave
Haven’t seen it mentioned once. Most of the time, it’s to NOT use brave as it’s sketchy, and to use Vivaldi, or even better Firefox.
Brave sucks ass. They sell your data
It’s a great browser. The mobile version is packed with features not found in other browsers and the desktop version is the best chromium based browser imho.
A lot of people here trash talk brave because of the CEO but there are bad apples in every corporation.
It’s a good browser. I used it for a really long time then switched to Firefox. Now I’m switching back, because Firefox has bizzare issues with rendering some pages and apps.
Brave is in the same business model as google. Selling ads. First drive adoption. Then flip the table to serve ads.
It works for you due to the firewall restrictions and such, great, use the tools that work for you.
But as far as using it as a default, nope; Firefox (and any non chromium browser if I can help it) all the way.
