Please stop reposting this crap every fucking day. What’s up with you and this exact article in particular anyway? Are you getting paid or something?
well, I just came across the article on Mastodon and wanted to share it. I mean jeez, imagine sharing and wanting to discuss interesting topics just for fun?
and I posted the article on [email protected] and then cross-posted it here, because I thought it was also an interesting community to discuss it. I saw a bunch of people cross-posting it elsewhere, so if you’re seeing it a bunch of times then it’s probably because those communities probably also have something in common with the article. I personally think every community have different people and different discussions to have, so I don’t see it as particularly bad.
I don’t get it either. It’s in the front in 5 different subs
TL;DR: The article claims that the Brave web browser is bad and should not be used.
The author points out that Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, co-founder (and ex-CEO) of Mozilla, and founder of Brave, donated 1,000 USD in support of a proposition to ban same-sex marriage. Along with making the claim that Brave’s goal is not to act as an ad-blocker, but instead to build and grow their own advertisement network, and he also believes that the network has several flaws:
- Brave Ads paysout in a form of cryptocurrency, called BAT (🦇).
- As BAT is a cryptocurrency there is high volatility.
- BAT can not be redeemed for fiat (“actual”) money directly from within the Brave Wallet.
- The author also believes that “it [the network] has largely failed” but that it “has generated a lot of revenue for Brave,” via the ICO (Initial Coin Offering; IPO for crypto).
In addition to these key points the author also:
- Claims that Brave prompted FTX, before the scandal.
- Cites the The Brave Marketer Podcast where ex-CMO of Crypto.com Steven Kalifowitz shares an ambitious goal of being a “‘brand like Coke and Netflix.’” The author then mentions that:
- In 2023 there was a report from The Financial Times that Crypto.com traded against their customers.
- In 2022 the company try to hide the severity of its layoffs.
- Mentions Brave’s integration with Gemini, and how the crypto exchange is under investigation for lying about FDIC insurance.
- Mentions a partnership with the the 3XP Web3 Gaming Expo where they sponsored the Esports Arena and rewarded contestants with the BAT token.
- Claims that Brave added affiliate/referral codes to URLs, such as “binance.us.”
Finally, the author lists Firefox and Vivaldi as alternatives to Brave, and ends the article with “Brave Browser is irredeemable, and you should not use it under any circumstances.”
I am human, please let me know if I’ve made a mistake.
Edit: Fixed bat emoji and typo.
The author points out that Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, co-founder (and ex-CEO) of Mozilla, and founder of Brave, donated 1,000 USD in support of a proposition to ban same-sex marriage.
My impression was Brave got started after he got hoofed out of Mozilla or left on his own accord after the backlash for showing his ass to be a homophobe. Redditor types were of course very angry about this blatant disregard for frozen peaches and jumped onto his new venture in droves
afaik he was pushed out of mozilla over the same 1k dono
As BAT is a cryptocurrency there is high volatilability (I don’t know if I spelled that right :/ ).
Volatility :-)
But Volatilability sounds cool
Agree :-D
Very volatibable word
Thank you, I fixed it!
If he’s bad, shouldn’t everything he touches be bad? Why web site that uses JavaScript should be just as bad. Any browser based on Mozilla should be bad. Why is it just Brave that’s bad for what he did in 2008?
As I understand it, the argument isn’t so much “if you use a thing made by a bad person, you are a bad person by association” but rather that using a commercial product made by a bad person, who spends his money on bad causes, is directly helping him spend more money on said bad causes. Since he has never apologized or shown any indication that he has become a better person, not wanting to monetarily support him is a valid reason to not use his product.
It’s really hard for the creator of Javascript to make money off of javascript, and it’s unlikely he has any financial interest in the Mozilla corporation anymore since they’re a nonprofit and thus don’t have share holders. However, he directly profits off of Brave.
Because it is cool thing to cancel everything in 2023.
Summary:
- Brendan Eich’s donation to Proposition 8, opposing same-sex marriage.
- Backlash and resignation from Mozilla CEO position due to controversy.
- Creation of Brave Software and fundraising despite backlash.
- Plan to replace ads with Brave’s own ad network faced legal challenges.
- Introduction of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) cryptocurrency for ad incentives.
- Privacy scandal involving affiliate codes added to URLs for revenue collection.
Please at least copypaste the content when you post…
I don’t usually judge by looks, but you can just tell that Brendan Eich is an insecure fragile person with many mental problems.
I don’t know what’s worse: The whole anti same-sex marriage deal or inventing Javascript.
Probably Javascript…
Oh he’s THAT guy?!
Fuck that guy. He basically is the reason popups was so damn widespread.
JavaScript is also the whole reason that the web is interactive. Without JavaScript the web would be mostly just static pages without any client side dynamic behavior.
Brendan Eich is a tool, but JavaScript is a useful tool, at least.
I think I’d prefer a mostly static web. Guess I should finally check out ublock origins medium mode or whatever its called.
I think I’d prefer a mostly static web.
Me too, gemini looks promising https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
Forms are interactive and dont require me to run your shitty code and execute it on my computer.
Keep that shit running on your server. I dont need another vector for malicious code to run on my machine
JavaScript?
Like, we use JavaScript everywhere.
I’m viewing this comment without JavaScript.
deleted by creator
Oh my bad, clearly no relation to JS or Brendan Eich there.
I don’t know what’s worse: The whole anti same-sex marriage deal or inventing Javascript.
Probably Javascript…
Heh. Made me smile.
Here, have an upvote! ;)
oh sorry! forgot about it adding a description. will do next time.
The fact is i don’t care about these things. All it matters is that Brave uses Chromium, therefore I’ll never touch it.
Had me in the first half not gonna lie. But yeah I agree with you.
plus they have Google Advert ID Permission in Android. Tell me who is more creep. Crypto-things can be disabled within a few clicks, While mozilla’s trash can be disabled using a bunch of configuration in about:config
Yeah. But if I ever want or need a Chromium browser, it may be the one.
Brave Software, the company behind the browser of the same name, was founded by Brendan Eich. He’s best known as the creator of JavaScript from his days at Netscape Communications
Say no more fam.
did not know about the founder’s past, cheers for this. whenever i’m forced to open a chromium browser for something from now on, i’ll be using vivaldi.
Is Vivaldi good? I’ve heard it’s like the old Opera, which I used to love (I used Opera from 2003 until around when they switched to Chromium, 2012ish)
I used to use it and I liked it quite a bit, I even replaced my gmail accounts with vivaldi.net accounts, though I may migrate to proton sometime. I use Firefox exclusively but if I needed to use a chromium-based browser, that’s the one I’d use. I’m not a power user by any stretch so my opinion probably has less weight than those of others on here, but that’s my two cents anyway.
i like vivaldi a lot :) mostly because of its UI and extremely easy in-depth customization. in my opinion it is the greatest-looking web browser (if you don’t factor in all the css fiddling you can do in a text editor with firefox, of course. but even then i don’t recall seeing any custom firefox user style that looked better than vivaldi to me).
the reason why i switched away from vivaldi and back to firefox after ~2 years of straight usage was that vivaldi had a weird performance bug for me where if i had too many tabs open for too many days in a row (laptop, no shutdown), it would randomly start freezing and i’d have to restart it. but when it was running on a fresh start, it was amazing. also the more ethical choice of using a non-chromium browser was part of the reason
it would randomly start freezing and i’d have to restart it. but when it was running on a fresh start, it was amazing
Weird, that’s the exact problem I had on my old desktop and have on my laptop with Firefox. Both were 8gigs of memory and I figured out that the freezing coincided with memory being depleted. My new desktop has, funnily enough, no problems with its 32gigs of memory. I need to purchase a new ram block for my laptop…
yeah I switched to Vivaldi from Firefox after a few years. was just sick of the incompatibility issues
To be honest the best chromium based browser I’ve used (when I’m forced to use a chromium based browser) is the Samsung internet one. It has a dark mode that actually works and protects my vampire eyes lol.
Never used brave because I heard all of the scammy ad network and crypto stuff years ago, immediately put me off it. Now learning that the creator probably hates me, it’s just another reason not to touch it.
Unfortunately that Samsung flavour of chrome is hopekessly outdated. Always a few releases behind and shouldn’t be used for security reasons.
I got a nice open source recommendation I think you’ll like: https://github.com/uazo/cromite
It has the same dark mode plus much more. I’ll leave you to reading through it yourself though.
I’ve tried it, looks cool, and using the flag “enable with selective inversion of non image elements” really helps eliminate all the issues with dark mode
In my experience Samsung internet it’s by far the best browser for android tablets
As if people really using a browser with a built-in advertising network.
Apparently yeah. For 1 US dollar a month in highly volatile crypto.
No, this article is pretty much idealistic rant aimed at hating the ceo. The product is fine.
Edit: the ads and crypto are opt in. I’d like to see if anyone ranting here about them has actually used Brave and went so far as to opt in to things they don’t want
The affiliate link hijacking was not opt-in. How could anything remotely like this be accepted in a privacy focused browser?
When Firefox had the mr robot extension incident everybody was (righfuly so) mad, but that was way less damaging than altering users’ intent.
Can someone explain how Brave siphoning some money from Amazon specifically impacts privacy? Does the affiliate get a list of accounts that bought something? Names? Addresses? Or does some money just show up in their account?
What information does Amazon get? That the person clicking is using Brave? They already know that from the user agent.
I, as the user, decide what affiliate link I want to use, not my browser!
Sure but that sounds like liberty and autonomy, not privacy.
I asked specifically how it infringes on privacy. Seems like the wrong word to use.
I asked specifically how it infringes on privacy.
You really think they don’t track you?
Who?
Some OSS developers, independent review/news sites get affiliate money to stay afloat. Amazon requires them to state this clearly. Brave didn’t declare it and probably stole (replace) innocent referrals. This is level 100 spyware/malware tactic.
I’m not saying it was ethical or good.
I’m asking how it specifically impacts privacy.
Every response I’ve gotten is a non privacy response, which leads me to suspect it’s a stealing from others issue not a privacy issue.
Like Firefox?
@whou Don’t forget the time they made it possible to ‘donate’ to creators, but when creators weren’t signed up with their program #Brave would just keep the donation. So users would think they have donated for example to Tom Scott, but in reality he never received anything. Overall just a scummy company.
after 90 days, they just send the BAT back to you. They don’t keep it.
qutebrowser ftw
Fine, but, like, don’t recommend Vivaldi. Also, if you disable the Brave ads, you’re not really supporting them, while still getting the benefits.
— Sent from Librewolf
why not vivaldi? i know it’s not open-source, but is there any other reason?
Vivaldi is chromium
oh right, of course! for some reason i was only thinking of which chromium-based alternatives we could recommend.
For something as important as your web browser, that’s a pretty good reason to me.
reasonable!
I don’t use it because the UI and logo are ugly
I don’t use it because it has crypto bullshit.
Honestly…
Based
Firefox is way worse. Fucking bookmarks don’t even have icons half the time in shit-ass Firefox and it’s dated as hell. Fuck firefox.
it was a similar article that made me switch from Brave to Ungoogled Chromium a few weeks ago, as a backup browser for the handful of sites that don’t work in Firefox.
deleted by creator
Tbh the homophobia was just the last straw on the hill of crypto nonsense they piled on the browser over the years. I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with Brave the more “fluff” they added, so going back to bare Ungoogled Chromium has been pretty good.
I only use brave for iOS because it is the best there is
FYI every browser on iOS has to use webkit under the hood as per crapple’s diktat, it’s just a fork of safari like PC brave is a fork of chromium, eve Firefox on iOS uses webkit AFAIK
It’s the only one that blocks ads everywhere though
I use Brave as a second browser (mainly to separate different activities) and did not have any issues with it apart from dragging tabs between monitors (it creates an additional empty tab sometimes when doing this). Turned off all unnecessary stuff right when I first launched it and that’s it. No bloat, no issues, just works. Didn’t know about this CEO controversy but seeing as it was a long time ago, don’t think it’s a valid reason to not use Brave. And both logo and name are cool.
It’s a solid option which we don’t really have a lot of in open source spaceSame here.
mainly to separate different activities
Firefox has profiles AND container tabs for exactly this though.
deleted by creator
I’m talking about the browser user profiles, where your user data (bookmarks, passwords, extensions) is stored.
Firefox puts them into profiles so that you can change between those sets, as if you’re a different user, without changing user accounts at the OS level.
This isn’t about online accounts.
deleted by creator
Yep, Mozilla doesn’t tie your Firefox settings to your Mozilla account. It does require it for syncing between devices though.
Glad to get people to understand Firefox better. Hope my comment didn’t come out as too crass or anything 😅
